From Science Daily:
…research now reveals that the common practice of cloud seeding with materials such as silver iodide and frozen carbon dioxide may not be as effective as it had been hoped. In the most comprehensive reassessment of the effects of cloud seeding over the past fifty years, new findings from Prof. Pinhas Alpert, Prof. Zev Levin and Dr. Noam Halfon of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences have dispelled the notion that seeding is an effective mechanism for precipitation enhancement.
The findings were recently reported in Atmospheric Research…
During the course of his study, Prof. Alpert and his colleagues looked over fifty years’ worth of data on cloud seeding, with an emphasis on the effects of seeding on rainfall amounts in a target area over the Sea of Galilee in the north of Israel. The research team used a comprehensive rainfall database and compared statistics from periods of seeding and non-seeding, as well as the amounts of precipitation in adjacent non-seeded areas. “By comparing rainfall statistics with periods of seeding, we were able to show that increments of rainfall happened by chance,” says Prof. Alpert. “For the first time, we were able to explain the increases in rainfall through changing weather patterns” instead of the use of cloud seeding.