THE George Municipality took a question from a former resident to heart by investigating the possibility of cloud seeding to induce rain to alleviate the drought, but according to experts it might not be the best idea for the beleaguered Southern Cape because there have not been enough studies on the matter in the area.

The question was raised by Mark Fleming, who now lives in the UK.

Fleming contacted The Herald to say he had become aware of the drought crippling the Southern Cape via comments on Facebook and by reading the newspaper online.

“I am deeply concerned about my hometown’s future existence and feel there have to be solutions to breaking the drought,” he said.

Fleming did some research on the internet and discovered cloud seeding had been used successfully around the world to induce rain.

“I wondered if the municipality had looked into this possibility.”

Spraying fine droplets of seawater and firing iodine crystals into clouds are among the seeding methods used to produce rain.

George Municipality civil and technical services senior manager Harold Basson took up the query with the Department of Water Affairs and Prof Andre Gorgens, technical director of water resources management with environmental engineers Aurecon.

Basson said yesterday neither the department nor Gorgens were keen on the idea. Gorgon’s opinions was that “not enough information is available and the research alone would cost in the region of R6-million, without any guarantees”.

He said most cloud seeding in the past had been performed inland where weather patterns were not the same as along the Garden Route.

Gorgens was involved with the Water Research Commission and Water Affairs in a cloud seeding research project on the Highveld and escarpment of South Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s.

He said: “I have no doubt hygroscopic cloud-based seeding (sea water or iodine crystals) of convective (tall, low-lying) clouds by aircraft will enhance long-term annual rainfall over a climatically suitable operational area of a few thousand kilometres by about 10%, if implemented scientifically.”

However, Gorgens said the convective cloud systems in the Southern Cape, which could be used for cloud seeding during the summer season, probably contributed to less that 35% of the total annual rainfall.

He said seeding trials in Israel of frontal cloud systems from the sea, which caused over 75% of the area’s rainfall, rather than individual cloud seeding, had shown that it could markedly enhance that country’s seasonal rainfall.

“This particular cloud-seeding focus has unfortunately not been investigated in the coastal areas of South Africa, where maritime frontal systems are significant and would require new research.”

According to American scientists, cloud seeding could also be a way of preventing global warming by using wind and seawater to reflect more sunlight.

National Centre for Atmospheric Research associate John Latham and fellow researchers propose seeding ocean clouds with tiny droplets of salt water.