STATEMENT OF DR. LOUIS BATTAN, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Dr. BATTAN. Thank you, Mr. Brown. It is a pleasure to see you again and to be invited to say a few words about the subject of weather modification.

For the record I should mention that in addition to my professional affiliation with the University of Arizona, I happen to be at the moment the chairman of the Long-Range Planning Commission of the American Meteorological Society and president of the Meteorology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and chairman of the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences of the National Academy of Science, but today I speak as someone who has had a long-term professional interest in weather modification.

Rather than read the statement that I have submitted, I would like to make a few points and answer any questions you might have.

I think it is clear that we are all here today because we need more water for agriculture, for municipalities and so on and we need less violent weather, and we have reason for believing that by means of various weather modification techniques we can do something about

these needs.

There is a great deal of evidence, accumulated over the last two or three decades, on this matter. One can view this problem as one of learning more about the nature of the atmosphere and understanding the mechanisms involved in weather, and second of developing the technology of modifying the weather in such a way that benefits exceed the costs.

There is no question that we can modify clouds. I am sure other witnesses have gone into this matter. We can modify clouds without a doubt. We can cause increases in precipitation, but there is still debate on the question of how much additional rain or snow you can produce and questions of can you do it in a predictable way.

The answers to these questions as to what you can do about it depends to a certain extent on who you talk to. There is no doubt that in various places around the world there are people who have a great deal of interest in the matter who are absolutely convinced that the weather can be modified in a beneficial way.

There are power companies in the western part of the United States who have retained the services of commercial cloud seeding for a great many years and either are convinced that they are getting more rain or snow from the cloud seeders or at least feel that it is a good bet that they might be getting it.

I just returned from 3 weeks in the Soviet Union with a delegation of five meteorologists who went over there to find out what the Soviets are doing on the subject of weather modification. There seems to be a strong conviction in the Soviet hydrometeorological service that hail suppression is very effective in the Soviet Union. There is even greater conviction in the agricultural community and the Ministry of Agriculture that hail suppression is effective.

Starting about 1961 or 1962 or perhaps 1963 in various places of the Soviet Union, mostly in the southern part of the country, the north and south Caucasus, in Moldavia, and various other places, there was instituted a series of hail seeding projects which are going steadily

and which this year covered an area of about 5 million hectares (about 121⁄2 million acres) which encompass agricultural areas-grapes and fruits, for the most part.

One could get some idea of the scale of this effort by estimating the number of people involved. We have the impression from the numbers that have been given to us that there is about one person employed for every 1,000 to 1,500 hectares of seeded area. This would mean that on the order of 4,000 to 5,000 people are involved in the operation of hail suppression activities this year and the number continues to grow. In the Soviet Union, the hail suppression experimental work is paid for by the main hydrometeorological service in the Soviet Union. The hail suppression operational work is paid for by the Ministry of Agriculture. We were told they had about 600 people, mostly scientists and engineers working in experimental activities.

It is important to note that there are many people involved in the production of food around the world who for their own reasons believe that seeding works.

On the other hand, if one sets out to try to establish beyond reasonable doubt, on the basis of criteria used by most scientists around the world, that cloud seeding can in fact increase the rainfall by some significant amount (10 to 20 percent) or reduce hail by some significant amount, the evidence is not very convincing. Therefore, we are using, and other people are using, a technology whose scientific basis is still lacking.

What do we do about it?

It seems to me that what is necessary in view of the enormous stakes that are involved and in view of the potential benefits that are involved in terms of food, water, and power, that it is essential that we find out what can be done by means of cloud seeding and other potential weather modification techniques. Such an objective requires a research program which is of such a size and such a duration that one can hope to get answers in a reasonable time. This history of weather modification in this country is one of stop and go operations; in my judgment it is a program of inadequate funding in light of the costs involved; it has been a program which has been characterized by ineffective direction. I think what the program needs is greater support and in the statement I have submitted, I have as a result of a question raised by Senator Bellmon some time ago, made some judgments as to the kind of budget that would be required to make some progress over the next few years.

In my prepared statement I have expressed my view about the two bills that the committee has before it, S. 3383 and H.R. 10039. As has been said by many witnesses before this committee, particularly the people from the Government, there have been many surveys on the status of weather modification by the National Academy of Sciences, by Government agencies, et cetera, and if all that S. 3383 called for was another survey on the status of weather modification, I would say it would be a waste of time, but that is not what the bill proposes. What it calls for is a bringing up-to-date of what we know about the subject of weather modification and the establishment of a national policy and a national program. At the moment we have neither, and for that reason I think the concept of S. 3383 is a good one. I support the establishment of a group within the Government to carry out this

kind of analysis. Hopefully it will be done by people who can come up with a statement which has the broad support of the scientific community, the public, and the Congress.

I do have some reservations as to whether the Department of Commerce is the appropriate place to do this job.

It is my view that it is necessary to assign principal administrative responsibility for weather modification to a single agency, and I think the Department of Commerce is the logical one to have it because weather modification is mostly a problem of the atmosphere sciences.

In terms of the task called for by S. 3383 the results are likely to be more widely accepted if the analyses and the recommendations on a national policy and program were made by an agency that does not already have a major stake in the program.

I might add that when I say I think NOAA is best qualified to have prime responsibility in this area. I do not intend to say that they should have sole responsibility. I think the National Science Foundation should be playing a major role in any national program on weather modification.

I have proposed that the tasks spelled out in S. 3383 might better be handled by an agency such as the Office of Technology Assessment which can take a more neutral position on this subject than can the agencies which already have programs in weather modification.

I believe that it is too early to adopt legislation such as H.R. 10039 which includes a list of controls over a technology which may not even be developed. What we should do is move ahead and learn about the science and technology of weather modification before we go too far on controls.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Dr. Battan.

I am quite interested in your remarks about the direction of the U.S.S.R. programs. Is that figure that you gave, approximately 4,500 people being involved, is that a light guess or is that a fairly firm figure?

Dr. BATTAN. We have the statement of Dr. Sedunov, the deputy director of the main hydrometeorological service in Moscow, who told us that 5 million hectares of farmland are being seeded for hail protection. Two or 3 years ago he wrote an article where he said they were seeding over 4 million hectares.

We visited a number of hail seeding experiments, one in Georgia and one in Moldavia. In Moldavia, they showed us figures on the growth of the project in terms of hectares and in terms of people. This year in Moldavia, they are seeding over 730,000 hectares with 700 people. That works out about 1 for every 1,000 hectares.

In Georgia, as I recall, they are seeding over something like 600,000 hectares in the Alizani Valley. On the basis of the number of people employed we came out with a figure of about 1 person in every 1,200 hectares. So on the basis of those two figures and extrapolating them, you get somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 people in the operational work. These people are not scientists for the most part. In the Alizani Valley they seed hail storms by means of rockets and they have on the order of 65 rocket launching sites in this one valley and they claim that they are standing by for 24-hour-a-day operation, 7 months of the year.

When I was there in 1969, the operation in the Alizani Valley was operating from one relatively small two-story building with an operations office in a wooden shack. They now have a complex of about a dozen buildings where people live and work all year long.

Mr. BROWN. Is that technology of seeding one which is familiar to the operators in this country?

Dr. BATTAN. Yes. The techniques have been known; we have been over there several times and they have been over here. We have talked about it. The essential difference between what they do and what we do is that they deliver the ice nuclei-silver or lead iodide-into the clouds by means of artillery or rockets. One technique employs 100 milimeter guns to fire ice nuclei into the cold parts of thunderstorms, observed by means of radar and regarded as potential hail storms. A second procedure involves the use of rockets to seed storms with ice nuclei. The third technique involves using artillery to seed with ice nuclei and salt.

The problem with duplicating the Soviet techniques here is the obvious one. Private and commercial aviation makes it very difficult to carry out seeding with big guns and big rockets. The rockets go to about 9 kilometers, 20,000 to 30,000 feet.

The National Hail Research Experiment in the United States was established for several reasons. One of the things it was hoped the project would do would be to test the Soviet techniques. The National Hail Research experiments had several problems, one of which had to do with the development of a seeding procedure which had some similarities with those used in the Soviet Union, but still did not require shooting up projectiles over eastern Colorado. Unfortunately the Soviet techniques have never been duplicated.

I asked the Soviets, when we were over there, how they accounted for the fact that they have had spectacular success over the last 15 years, whereas the National Hail Research Experiment hasn't had any success like that at all. They claim that it rests with the way the clouds were seeded. They claim the National Hail Research Experiment never did put the silver iodide nuclei into that part of the cloud where they are convinced the hail grows.

There is an experiment going on Switzerland which is just beginning under the direction of Switzerland and Italy which is supposed to test the Soviet procedures. They are buying the seeding rockets from the Soviet Union. The Soviets will sell their whole system, if you want to buy it. The have already sold it to Bulgaria and Hungary. The Soviets are selling seeding rockets to the Swiss in order, in the view of many scientists, to get a definitive test in the west of the Soviet scheme. One of the interesting aspects of our visit over there was that in at least two places and particularly in Moscow they are already establishing a fall-back position. Dr. Sedunov, the deputy director of hydrometeorological services says that the Swiss test is not a true test of the Soviet method. Nevertheless the Swiss experiment will be as close a test of the Soviet rocket technique as has ever been performed outside the Soviet Union.

Mr. BROWN. Did you receive sufficient information to be able to verify the way in which they are actually able to document the results of the hail suppression?

Dr. BATTAN. I have been over there several times over the last 15 years, and there is no question that they seed the clouds the way they say they seed the clouds. I have been over there when big thunderstorms were occurring in the places where they use artillery and rockets. They follow the procedures that they say they follow. They use radar and they detect. They triangulate on it. They call on the radio to a gun position and they start banging away at these clouds. The question you asked is, of course, the $64 question, does it do any good? How do you establish whether it does any good?

We do not have the evidence which allows us to answer that question. What is required is to be there and see how they collect the data. The way they evaluate it, Mr. Brown, is to examine agricultural reports on hail damage. They say that the hail damage figures come from the Agricultural Ministry. They compare the hail damage in the seeded area with the hail damage that had occurred for 2 or 3 years before the seeding began. Also, they compare the hail damage over the seeded area with damage over the surrounding countryside. If you look at the numbers and you are prepared to accept them for what they are represented to be, then you do not have to be a genius to reach the conclusion that they are doing some good. The question is, do those numbers mean what they say they mean? And that is hard to know, because of such questions as how do they discriminate between damage caused by hail and damage caused by wind, and damage caused by excessive rain or inadequate rain.

One of the problems that comes up doing a visit to the U.S.S.R. is the problem of language interpretation. It is sometimes very difficult to pin down scientific points because of difficulties with the language, but fundamentally the difficulty is knowing how much confidence you can put in the numbers. I have a feeling after having tried to sort this thing through that what is required is essentially what the Swiss are doing. It is necessary to test the Soviet techniques independently.

Mr. BROWN. Do you have any knowledge of why they put a major emphasis on hail suppression rather than on precipitation augmentation?

Dr. BATTAN. We asked that question on several visits over there and the answer that kept coming back was that in the southern part of the U.S.S.R. hail is a big problem. Not surprisingly, the one place in the Soviet Union where there is considerable amount of research going on on rainfall is in the Ukraine. But of course, northern Moldavia and southern Ukraine are very similar and they are growing the same kind of things. We asked if, following the droughts, in 1972 and 1975, there was pressure from the government to get involved in the operation of more rainfall seeding projects. The scientists in the Ukraine said those kinds of things happen, but they resist them. The only answer that I can figure out is that in the southern part of the Soviet Union rainfall is not that critical, it is hail, but that in the Ukraine where rainfall is critical there has been a big push in rainfall augmentation research. In 1969 when we went over there the northern part of the Caucasus and in Georgia, they had been seeding clouds for something like 7 or years, and we asked them what the hail seeding did to the rain. And the answer came back that they did not know because rainfall quantity was not critical to agriculture. The American delegation found that

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