@wren@feddit.uk avatar

wren

@wren@feddit.uk

ello! :)

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wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

the bus service in the photo (Purple 17 💜) is so frequent, that by the time you’ve gotten to the bus stop and checked the time, there’s one (or sometimes three) buses coming up the road! Reading council doesn’t get enough credit for Reading buses being fantastic

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

This article isn’t perfectly scientifically accurate but it’s better than most! For those interested, here’s a better (detailed) explanation of the science:

Cloud seeding works best in supercooled liquid clouds, which start with barely any ice in. For ice to form in clouds, you need INP (ice nucleating particles), aerosols such as sea salt, or dust, for the ice to grow onto. INP can be pretty rare, depending on where you are in the world.

By adding silver iodide (an efficient INP) ice crystals can form. This means the cloud has both ice and liquid water in (a “mixed phase” cloud).

For multiple reasons, ice grows better and faster than liquid cloud droplets (the “Wegener Bergeron Findeisen effect” for one). Because there’s only so much water in the cloud, these ice crystals then grow at the expense of water droplets in the air, allowing for big snowflakes to grow, but droplets evaporate.

This turns it from a cloud with many tiny droplets, into one with big heavy snowflakes, which fall out of the cloud. Before the snowflakes reach the ground, they melt, turning into rain.

TLDR; cloud seeding takes the water already in the cloud, and makes it precipitate slightly more efficiently, but only if you improve the balance of aerosols in the air just right

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

good question!! I actually might have been mistaken by saying sea salt was an INP (whoops).

Sea salt is a great condensation nuclei (CCN). CCN allow cloud droplets to form instead of ice crystals.

For cloud seeding to work well, it’s better to seed with INP instead of CCN because if you encourage lots of droplets to form, all you get is a bunch of really tiny droplets, making a really bright white cloud (no rain!). (Side note: that’s why rain clouds look dark: they’re made of fewer really big droplets.)

Adding sea salt to clouds is a thing though! It’s been proposed as Marine Cloud Brightening - adding lots of sea salt to the air over the ocean, making the earth more reflective to combat further global warming.

As far as I know, most inorganic salts are good INP or CCN, but have varying efficiencies. Sea salt dissolves in liquid water whereas silver iodide doesn’t, and silver iodide has the right sort of hexagonal crystal lattice for ice to start sticking to. So silver iodide is a great INP whereas sea salt is a great CCN.

Even longer (and reasonably silly) explanation here: https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/09/01/why-are-clouds-seeded-silver-does-it-work-16538

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

There is no technology on earth that can make storms of this scale. Cloud seeding doesn’t add any water to the cloud. At most, it causes a very slight increase in rain. If you accidentally cloud seed “too much” you nucleate lots of ice crystals within the cloud, making many tiny ice crystals (which don’t precipitate at all).

They didn’t seed this cloud - but it wouldn’t have done anything if they had.

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

If you mean climate change, then yeah, obviously humans do influence the climate. In terms of individual scale events (weather, big storms) there’s not any existing technology that exists that can cause a single targeted big storm event.

Snow and ice are a way of life here. See how a lost winter upended that. Wisconsin’s Northwoods are normally a playground of snow and ice right now. But life here has become unrecognizable. (wapo.st)

It is the second straight winter of extreme Wisconsin weather, but at the other end of the spectrum. A year ago, parts of the Northwoods were buried under more than 100 inches of snow, over twice their average snowfall....

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

So much beautiful snow photography (stock footage etc) comes from Wisconsin. It’s well known for snow and snow research. Sad to see the landscape changing over there

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

Surprised to see none of the comments mentioning the 4B movement

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

it’s a feminist movement, in backlash to misogyny and pro-natalism in South Korea (it’s becoming more widespread, though). The 4Bs are the “four no’s”:

  • no dating men
  • no sex with men
  • no marriage with men
  • no childbearing

It gets a lot of pushback and is called selfish etc. but women are very angry & upset that the government only sees them for their reproductive use, and it’s reasonable to not want to date someone who doesn’t view you as human.

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

It’s a concern already for low-lying atoll islands like those in the Maldives and Tuvalu. Half of Tuvalu’s capital city is expected to be flooded by 2050, but they’ve been seeing the effects for years unfortunately.

It really depends where you are though - my town is at around 100 m elevation and about 80 km inland. When I was a kid, my mum used to have nightmares about tidal waves coming over the horizon because she was so scared of sea level rise.

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

I’ve been keeping an eye on the ensemble since early last week - at one point it was forecast that Cornwall was going to get 6 inches of snow! Snow is notoriously tricky to forecast unfortunately

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

I saw the bakeries one first - fooled me into thinking this was sincere haha

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

I wouldn’t add a stick of cinnamon - it’s way better freshly ground to make proper masala chai :)

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

Jasmine green tea (occasionally with oat milk) or oolong is usually my favourite. In terms of English breakfast tea: definitely Yorkshire Gold!

wren,
@wren@feddit.uk avatar

Theoretically, yes, but you might have to go through the CEDA archive to get it all (i.e. sign up to CEDA, then make a data request).

Chilbolton observatory have live data feeds which I like, but they’re RHI not PPI so maybe not what you want anyway.

deleted_by_author

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    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    In Sweden they have kebab pizza (kebab meat, iceberg lettuce, raw onions, salad cream) - it’s actually great but it’s horrific microwaved. They also have “banana curry” pizza (did not attempt)

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    hard agree on the siesta idea but instead of 12-3 I’d say stop work at 3-6 instead, or work mornings and evenings (with lots of time in between)

    in summer, the hottest part of the day can be 4-6pm (because there’s a big lag between the sunniest part of the day and the ground heating up, which then heats the air) - also Spain has a weird timezone (GMT+2 despite being west of us, so their sunrise was 5 mins earlier than ours, but was at 7am local time, and ours was at 5:05am)

    Low suphur shipping rules might be exacerbating global warming (www.carbonbrief.org)

    The unintentional consequence of lowering sulphur content in marine fuel, as part of clean air regulations, is a weakened cooling effect caused by sulphur particles in ships’ exhaust fumes, according to a new model. This inadvertently exacerbates warming, potentially raising global temperatures by 0.05C by 2050. Other factors,...

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    People have been talking about marine cloud brightening being one of the more viable geoengineering choices for decades, using a variety of choices for what they add to the air

    SO2 sounds like a really unhealthy choice (I was rooting for sea salt being used) but it’s still an interesting hypothetical: if they proved that it SO2 definitely worked better than other compounds, would they still choose to use it?

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    If you’re interested in up-to-date data on this sort of stuff, Zach Labe has some really great figures on his website: zachlabe.com

    (I mean, the figures aren’t great because of the ramifications, but they’re clear and concise)

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    BBC weather doesn’t even use the Met Office anymore - maybe it’s time to take this as a sign to move to a more accurate forecaster ;)

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    Love that they’re calling the cafe The Green Rabbit to go along with the other colour themed names in the street. Still can’t really comprehend how it’ll all fit together but exciting nonetheless

    wren,
    @wren@feddit.uk avatar

    The word "could" in that BBC article is doing a lot of work !

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