Given the effects of a drought that is worsening in more than 50 percent of the national territory, the authorities of the Government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have intensified the bombardment of clouds, artificially ionizing the atmospheric conditions to provide water to the population.
Since the beginning of the first decade of the 2000s, the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) reported on atmospheric ionization work carried out by the company Electrificación Local de la Atmósfera Terrestre SA de CV in the Golan Heights, an area disputed by Syria and Israel, this in order to repeat the processes in the states of Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas.
According to the former professor of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Manuel Leal Garza, in an article published last January entitled “Ionizing antennas and the opinion of the scientific committee”, he analyzed the period between September 2019 and February 2020 and the rainfall contributions captured at the Lázaro Cárdenas dam. He highlighted that the company Soluciones Climaticas Avanzadas (SCA) signed a contract with the Laguna Private Initiative to install six ionizing antennas and increase the volume of water in said dam.
Of the total number of antennas, only two were installed, one in Cruz de Lota, in Sinaloa and another in Santa María del Oro in Durango.
It should be remembered that in 2013 the Government of Coahuila refused to participate in a rain induction scheme through atmospheric ionization.
According to the former Secretary of Rural Development, Noe Graza Flores, the project was expensive and did not guarantee rainfall.
He highlighted on that occasion that in 2012 a company offered to make it rain, and the services cost that year 140 million pesos. Another similar service, he detailed in 2013, was for 14 million pesos.
Leal Garza pointed out in his article that the National Water Commission (Conagua) reported that the Lázaro Cárdenas dam began to have an increase in its water storage when the two antennas began to operate.
In August of last year, this publishing house reported that more than 97 million cubic meters of water were captured in just one day, derived from atypical rains in the region.
For November of that same year, he highlighted -in the 75 years of operation of the dam- that a historical storage of 232 Mm³ was obtained, derived from the use of ionizing antennas.
Leal Garza described the atmospheric ionizing antennas as an effective and lower cost alternative to provide water supply to the population, the same as he assures, The federal Healthy Water project for La Laguna could benefit.
It should be noted that in 2021 alone, the operation of the Simas Torreón wells cost 200 million pesos from the treasury in payments to the Federal Electricity Commission.
ATMOSPHERIC INTERVENTION
Despite the water crises that mainly afflict Mexico City, Nuevo León and Chihuahua, the federal government has warned, through the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, that there is a risk of damage due to the dispersion of chemicals for the formation of clouds, same that is implanted by airplanes.
These cloud seeding processes have brought with them a wide debate about the consequences that it can bring with it.
Although there is a lack of conclusive evidence on the effectiveness of this chemical practice, the damage to human health and the environment has mainly been questioned, since the precursors can be ingested or inhaled.
The risks to the environment have also been under debate, since the scientific community they do not agree on how the ecosystem can be altered.
Another of the debates is about the possible alteration of the water cycles.
About cloud bombardment, known as cloud seeding, is a process that involves dispersing chemicals into clouds to increase the amount of precipitation.
This is done with the goal of increasing the amount of rain or snow in a certain area, either to combat drought, to provide water for agriculture, to fill reservoirs, or to reduce the effects of storms and hurricanes.
The bombardment is carried out by aircraft equipped to disperse materials in the clouds, such as silver iodide, sodium nitrate or calcium chloride.
These substances can stimulate the formation of ice crystals in clouds and increase the likelihood of precipitation.
Recently, the governments of Mexico City and Nuevo León have opted for this practice to attack the water crisis in their territories.
In 2022, Nuevo León experienced one of its worst water crises in its recent history, which led the government of emecista Samuel García to seek support from the federal Administration in the private initiative for atmospheric ionization.
The situation was such that clashes were reported between the civilian population over access to water.
In the recent case of Mexico City, the Head of Government, Claudia Sheinbaum, reported that as of this week the bombardment of clouds will begin in the Cutzamala System area to capture rain.
He stressed that the operation will be in charge of the National Defense and acknowledged that the effectiveness of cloud seeding will be known according to its effectiveness.
“The Ministry of National Defense does it, all the methodology. The request we made was that it be done for the area of the Cutzamala dams, and we will be informing you when this is developed and the result they have,” commented the president.
“Apparently they are going to start the bombardment of clouds next week and it will last up to several months”abounded.
He assured that the bombardment of clouds to capture rainwater has had positive results in other places, but he recognized that it depends on factors such as humidity in the environment, among others.
At the moment it is unknown if the State of Coahuila or the Torreón City Council, which rule out drought or water crisis in the state, will implement this methodology in the coming months or next administrations.
READY ‘BOMBARDEO’ IN DURANGO
The bombardment of clouds is scheduled for the third or fourth week of April, in a first stage it would seek to implement it in the Laguna Region and in a subsequent one in municipalities of the North.
Meanwhile, the Government of Durango, 15 days ago, asked the Federation for support with the cloud bombing scheme, taking into account that they have few planes to do it and they are from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena).
“They already authorized us to send our pilots to train and I told them that we have a plane, the Caravan, and they already told us yes,” I note.
A strong aircraft is required to be able to fly above the clouds and apply the bombing procedure.
A first stage is contemplated for La Laguna, where the scarcity of water has become more acute, while, in a second stage, the North will be attended.
Cloud bombardment requires good logisticsOtherwise, what happened in Monterrey, Nuevo León, where they bombed above the city, but it rained in another place, will happen.
This was stated by Governor Esteban Villegas Villarreal, who said that Ricardo Navarrete Gómez, head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development (SAGDR) participated in a meeting that took place in Sonora, to discuss rural issues.
He commented that he recently spoke with Claudia Sheinbaum, head of government of Mexico City, who mentioned that they will have to bomb Michoacán so that it rains in the country’s capital.
“It’s not just about getting on the plane, flying and bombing to see what happens; you have to do a study of wind, density and other factors that influence precipitation,” said.
The most important thing is that there are clouds when the time comes to implement the strategy, because if they are not, the drought will worsen.
For now, the operation is authorized to start between the third and fourth week of April, in the middle of the dry season.
