Rainmaker companions with Atmo to squeeze extra rain from clouds

Cloud seeding startup Rainmaker is partnering with Atmo, an AI-powered meteorology startup, the businesses solely advised TechCrunch.

The 2 function on complementary ends of the climate system: Atmo research atmospheric patterns to forecast climate occasions, whereas Rainmaker digests such information in an try and squeeze extra precipitation out of climate programs.

Below the partnership, Atmo will use its deep studying fashions to assist Rainmaker determine clouds which have potential for seeding. The forecasting startup may also provide Rainmaker’s cloud seeding providers, deployed by way of small drones, to its prospects. 

For its half, Rainmaker will contribute information from its proprietary radar system to find out how a lot rain the clouds produced.

Rainmaker has been within the information of late, focused by conspiracy theorists who declare that the startup’s cloud seeding operations in Texas performed a task in latest floods within the state.

However in accordance with a number of scientists TechCrunch spoke with, that’s merely not doable.

“Anyone is in search of someone guilty,” Bob Rauber, a professor of atmospheric sciences on the College of Illinois, advised TechCrunch final week. 

Although cloud seeding can nudge clouds to drop extra precipitation, it’s a small quantity in contrast with the scale of a storm. One well-documented case in Idaho launched a further 186 million gallons of precipitation, which pales compared with the “trillions of gallons of water” a big storm will course of, Rauber stated.

Cloud seeding is broadly used all through the Western United States, largely to enhance snowpack and increase the quantity of water that leads to reservoirs in the summertime. Whereas it’s additionally utilized in locations like West Texas to coax extra rain from summer season storms, the outcomes have been modest.

The West Texas Climate Modification Affiliation, which Rainmaker has labored with beforehand, says that cloud seeding within the area has boosted precipitation by about 15%, or about two inches, per yr.

The probably motive for that’s as a result of the varieties of clouds floating over West Texas don’t reply in the identical means as clouds in mountainous areas just like the Western U.S., Rauber stated. Rainstorms are even much less responsive, he added, since they’re already primed to drop loads of precipitation.