Essay: FORECAST: A Weatherman in the Sky

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August 1980. Perched on his polar-orbiting platform 200 miles above the earth, the Weatherman in the Sky begins a routine scan of the earth's surface. Beyond the green necklace of the Antilles, Hurricane Clytemnestra begins to collapse, shredded by a continuous aerial barrage of silver-iodide seeds from U.S. planes. The weatherman flashes Moscow that intense hail is due to fall on Irkutsk by early afternoon, and the Russians quickly send up rockets laden with chemicals, melting the hail before it lifts the wheat fields. As for more mundane matters, vacationers on Cape Cod will have a clammy morning—but only until 10:40 a.m. And the working girls in Chicago had better go to lunch plastic-headed: it will rain from 12:35 to 2:15.

THE scene is not science fiction. Storm-spotting sensors and the micrometeorological predictions of an orbiting weatherman are well within the reach of today's technology, giving man for the first time in his history the tools at least to tame, if not to conquer, the weather. Weather research has experienced a breakthrough in the past few years, and scientists around the world are rushing to take advantage of what the National Academy of Sciences calls "this new and enormous power to influence the conditions of human life." This year alone the U.S. Government has published some 1,700 pages of hard, scientific findings on weather modification. The National Academy has recommended a sixfold increase in such research by 1970, and President Johnson has called for "new strides toward coping with the historic enemies, storm and drought and flood."

Sun, Wind & Orbit

The dream of weather control emerged with man from the cave, but for most of humanity's existence it has remained only a dream. Primitive man made sacrifices to the elements, often in human blood, and the Greeks made gods of weather's components: Typhon, Zephyros, Apollo. Beginning with the Greek Philosopher Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.), who correctly surmised that climate was generated by solar radiation, there have been thousands of efforts at influencing weather. Now that man is approaching the stage at which some control is possible, the question is not just how he can exert his influence but how far he should go in pressing changes whose consequences still remain hidden.

Man has, of course, already altered some of the weather's effects to his advantage. He has air-conditioned many of his edifices, and such projects as Houston's Astrodome suggest that he will go much farther. His new vehicles, amid the general advance in knowledge of meteorology, are the creations of modern technology, particularly electronic-eyed weather satellites like Tiros and Nimbus and high-speed computers that can digest and interpret weather data.