蜜芽传媒

CrowdScience listener Rit, from Pune in India, is staring out of his window at the falling rain. It鈥檚 been pouring for four days now, and shows no sign of stopping. The laundry is piling up, all his shoes are wet, and he鈥檚 worried about the effect it鈥檚 having on the environment, and on agriculture. When it rains like this, the animals suffer, and the crops are destroyed.

Cloud seeding and Weather Engineering are hot topics right now, and can bring the rain to places that need it. But Rit wants to know whether we can artificially stop the pouring rain, especially in an emergency. Following the devastating floods in Texas, it鈥檚 clearly not just a problem for countries with a monsoon season.

Presenter Chhavi Sachdev is also sitting in a downpour at home in Mumbai. She dons her rain jacket and rubber boots to try and find out whether science can help Rit with his question. From controlling the clouds in India, to bringing rain to the deserts of the UAE, to firing high-powered lasers into the skies above Geneva, we find out what weather engineering is really capable of.

With thanks to:

Dr Thara Prabhakaran, from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

Alya Al Mazroui, Director of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science

Jean-Pierre Wolf, Applied Physics Department of the University of Geneva

Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev
Producer: Emily Knight
Series Producer: Ben Motley

(Image: Girl carrying umbrella while standing on road against trees during rainfall. Credit: Cavan Images/Getty Images)