Sydney floods: Unfounded cloud seeding claims distribute online

For the third time this year, Sydney has been hit by major floods. Scientists blame intense rain fall on a combination of elements – but , on social media, unfounded allegations of “weather manipulation” have spread widely.

About just as much as eight months’ really worth of rain has come down in just 4 days, bringing parts of Australia’s largest city to a standstill.

Experts say not one factor can clarify this extreme climate, pointing instead to warmer oceans and saturated soils as contributing factors.

But conspiracy theorists do not get buying it. Upon social media, they blame the extreme rainfall on “cloud seeding” and “weather manipulation”.

There is no evidence to back up such ideas, but this hasn’t prevented falsehoods from reaching thousands of individuals online.

Cloud seeding is a real thing. It calls for manipulating existing clouds so that they produce a lot more rain or snow.

This really is done by shooting small particles (usually silver iodide) straight into clouds. Water vapour gathers around the particles and eventually falls since precipitation.

The method has been around for decades. It’s been used all around the globe to – by way of example – help irrigate crops.

But there is no evidence to suggest cloud seeding has anything to do with the current rainfall in Sydney. That will hasn’t stopped some TikTok users from denouncing “weather engineering”.

They say it’s all part of the government plan to “weaponise” the weather against its own people – a popular conspiracy trope that has been about for years.

“The idea that this is happening on a widespread scale, and that there is some motive to manipulate the weather is a complete myth, inch says Dr Ellie Gilbert, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.

However, this myth seems to have found an market. Many of the accounts noticed by the BBC publishing this type of content have also shared other conspiracy theories involving global warming, Covid vaccines, and the Moon landings.

Some conspiracy theorists have been sharing a 2016 news statement from the Australian TELEVISION network 7News – which has now been watched thousands of instances.

In it, the newsreader reports on worries by Tasmanian residents that the region’s most severe floods in 40 years might have been linked to cloud seeding.

But a probe by the Tasmanian federal government found that cloud seeding did not lead to or worsen the particular heavy rains – a conclusion given that backed by self-employed scientists and specialists.

“We don’t have a co-ordinated work to change the weather, since it’s just in physical form and financially unfeasible, ” says Dr Gilbert, who provides that even if cloud seeding played a role, it would have “an absolutely miniscule effect. ”

There is certainly no single cause for the intense rain fall Sydney has experienced in the last few days. Yet experts say the flooding has been made worse by climate change and a La Niña weather phenomenon.

A La Niña develops whenever strong winds whack the warm surface area waters of the Pacific cycles away from South America plus towards Indonesia. In their place, colder seas come up to the surface.

In Australia, an Una Niña increases the probability of rain, cyclones, plus cooler daytime temperatures.

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