With all the problems the West Coast frequently has with drought, why couldn't we devise a way to evaporate large amounts of water out in the Pacific and send it into the Jet Stream? Surely we could time and position it well-enough to create rain in particular areas.

Maybe this idea could, also, be extended to bring rain to other parts of the country? Sending the evaporation higher might let it travel farther before it descended.
-- etrigan, Jun 28 2000

The Jet Stream - Teaching Guide http://www.weather..../class3/guide9.html
Weather.com's teaching guide about the Jet Stream. [etrigan, Jun 28 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Old nuclear fuel rods (or maybe even Pu from old warheads) could be recycled into giant reactor cores which could be suspended underwater from floating barges a few hundred miles out. They'd boil the seawater and the vapor would drift over to Calif.
-- wiml, Jun 28 2000


HOw would this affect West Coast style rap?
-- vincenzo, Jun 28 2000


We could use solar power to evaporate the water! Hey, wait...

What you describe is a desalination plant, except that instead of condensing the water vapor immediately you let it go into the sky and condense wherever it wants.

I think that's strictly less efficient (especially if what you want to do is feed cities) than traditional evaporative desalination... and even that isn't currently economically viable.

Consider that the Sun pumps *huge* amounts of energy into evaporating the ocean. You're hoping to match millions of square miles of insolation with some man-made power source? Good luck!
-- egnor, Jun 29 2000


Some dang fool was advocating towing Arctic icebergs down to sunny Southern California. Melt runoff would be collected and piped onshore. As if the ocean wasn't cold enough already. Actually, maybe not that foolish, considering the water supply now comes from mountains 400 miles away through aqueducts more than a little vulnerable to the Big One....
-- rmutt, Jun 29 2000


There'll be a shortage of water in California as long as it's politically expedient to make water so cheap to farmers that's it's economically viable to grow crops such as rice in the desert.
-- hippo, Jul 14 2000


Not to mention non-crops, such as lawns in Phoenix.
-- hello_c, Sep 05 2000


And lawns in Los Angeles for that matter...

The lovely green grass we have here always puts me in awe, especially considering the general lack of water
-- davros42, Feb 12 2001


It would be a more cost effective to build a solar powered pipeline from either the Columbia or Mississippi rivers, or Lake Superior.
-- songpro, Jan 25 2003


pumping water into the atmsphere to transport it to points that nature "forgets" may not work as imagined, as the same laws of physics that makes desserts still applies.... lower pressuer and temperature that occur when rising above mountains causes "premature" percipitation. And so pushing the vapor mass higher would force rain.

Cooling effects of ocean winds can cause desserts similarly - which is ironic as there is an abundance of water and vapor - as in ca.

The shear lenght of travel of landlocked areas causes areas such as midwest us to be dry.

You can't beat the physics of nature.
-- strongheart, Aug 22 2003



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