Scientists are cooking up a plan to cut the cost of tackling snowbound streets – by clearing clouds from the skies, writes MEGAN K STACKin Moscow
IN THE snow-hushed woods on Moscow’s northern edge, scientists are decades deep into research on bending the weather to their will.
They’ve been at it since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin paused long enough in the throes of the second World War to found an observatory dedicated to tampering with climatic inconveniences.
Since then, they’ve melted away fog, dissipated the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl and called down rains fierce enough to drown unborn locusts threatening the distant northeastern grasslands.
Now they’re poised to battle the most inevitable and emblematic force of Russian winter: the snow.
Moscow’s government, led by long-reigning mayor Yuri Luzhkov, has indicated that clearing the capital’s streets of snow is too expensive. Instead, the city is weighing up a plan to seed the clouds with liquid nitrogen or dry ice to keep heavy snow from falling inside its limits.
Word of the proposal has sent a shudder through Moscow just as the first dark, snowy days have fallen on the capital. It has also piqued the surrounding region, which would receive the brunt of the displaced snowfall, and has raised concerns among ecologists.
“I was very surprised, because [the mayor] never even asked us,” says Alexei Yablokov, who sits on the mayor’s ecological council and has concerns about the proposal, including the environmental effects and pressure on surrounding villages. “We never discussed it at all.”
The city government says it hasn’t reached a decision. But scientists at the Central Aerological Observatory say they are deep into negotiations with city authorities and expect the cloud-seeding plan to go forward.
The city has hit upon a splendid idea, the scientists say. Labouring against the uncomfortable sense that their observatory’s import has waned since its Soviet heyday, they are eager to unleash their many and various technologies.
They already seed the clouds for political effect, clearing the skies over Moscow twice a year to ensure sun-drenched celebrations of patriotic holidays. In Russia, nobody rains on the parade – because the Russian government doesn’t allow it.
“Victory Day is the most sacred holiday for us,” says Bagrat Danilian, deputy chief of cloud-seeding at the observatory. “When veterans go out to celebrate in Moscow, we create good weather for them.” All it takes, he says, is sacks of cement – 500 grade, to be precise.
Drop the powder down into the clouds, and they vanish.
Soviet scientists learned how to disperse clouds by accident 40 years ago: they had flown overhead and dropped powdered blue paint into the clouds to tag them for observation. Instead, the powder melted the clouds away.
A dark-haired, solid man with a quick grin, Danilian was born to an Armenian family in Soviet Georgia and studied physics at Tbilisi State University. He moved to Moscow in 1979 to work for the observatory and has been here ever since.
In Soviet times, when Danilian was younger and funding more plentiful, he was sent off to Vietnam, Cuba and Syria to study the clouds. He has flown into hurricanes; bounced through airstreams like a ping-pong ball; and survived lightning strikes on turbo-prop planes.
“You won’t find a more interesting profession,” he enthuses. “You can’t compare it with anything. You just float on your own adrenaline.”
There is something almost godlike about interfering in the weather. It was a need to rationalise the whims of storm, heat and climate that inspired the notion of deities in ancient times, and there is still an inherent sense of helplessness before nature’s force.
Russian cloud-seeding, however, is done in moderation, the scientists insist.
“You shouldn’t overstep the threshold over which the weather would change globally,” Danilian says. “We’re trying to look for that threshold in a very careful way.” Sometimes, despite their efforts, nature wins. And, in one instance last year, gravity.
As the Russian airforce toiled to chase the clouds out of town for last year’s independence day celebrations, a clump of cement tumbled to earth instead of dissipating into the clouds. It crashed through the roof of a house on the city’s outskirts.
Rather than accept the $2,000 (€1,400) compensation offered by the military, the homeowner huffed to reporters that she would file a suit for “moral suffering”.
It’s unlikely that Muscovites would agree to forgo snow altogether. During the long, dark months of Russian winter, the flicker of clean flakes against the sky is one of the few recurrent graces, creating a vast playground for children and briefly coating the drab winter days.
But Luzhkov is prepared to choke off any particularly massive snowfalls, which usually unleash battalions of snow ploughs, flanked by armies of workers hoisting ice picks and shovels. The city government believes it can save more than $13 million (€8.8 million) with cloud-seeding.
“In the movies, the snow looks very beautiful with St Basil’s Cathedral in the background,” Azarov, the senior scientist, says. “But this snow costs a pretty penny to Moscow authorities.”