THE EDITOR, Sir:
I NOTICED an article in the August 18 edition of your paper concerning water shortages in Jamaica. This article briefly mentioned 'cloud seeding' as one means considered to help alleviate the drought conditions. It has probably been forgotten but our company, North American Weather Consultants, conducted a drought relief cloud seeding programme during the summer of 1975 in an attempt to provide some relief from drought conditions that were plaguing the City of Kingston and its major water storage reservoirs; Hermitage and Mona. These same reservoirs are mentioned as again holding less water than desired.
A four-month seeding programme was conducted using a specially equipped Jamaica Defence Force Twin Otter aircraft to seed selected cumulus clouds with silver iodide flares. The conclusion of the final report from this programme is as follows: " A limited scope precipitation enhancement programme conducted for the Kingston Corporate Area of Jamaica during the summer of 1975, appears to have been successful. Due to the high natural variability of natural rainfall amounts, the exact attainments of the programme cannot be accurately specified. Qualitative evaluations based on percent of average precipitation lend strong support to the conclusion that there was a positive seeding effect in the target area. Semi-quantative target and control evaluations performed by the Meteorological Service of Jamaica indicated increases in precipitation of approximately 26 percent. A corresponding increase in runoff of 165 million gallons was estimated to have resulted from the four-month project. Attributing all direct costs of the project to this estimated increase in runoff indicates the cost of additional deliverable water to have been 37 cents per 1000 gallons".
Our company has conducted more recent cloud seeding programmes on situations similar to the one in Jamaica. For example, programmes have been conducted in Guatemala and Honduras both with favourable outcomes.
I believe it would be quite feasible to again conduct a cloud seeding programme over the Hermitage and Mona catchment areas (and perhaps other areas of the island) to the benefit of the people of Jamaica.
I am etch,
DON GRIFFITH
President, North American
Weather Consultants
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
nawc@nawcinc.com
Via Go-Jamaica
