WMO Executive Council approves Statement on Weather Modification

Weather modification is the deliberate intervention in the Earth's atmosphere to influence local weather conditions, typically through techniques like cloud seeding. This primarily involves dispersing substances into clouds to alter precipitation patterns to increase rainfall, reduce hail, or dissipate cloud cover. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) neither promotes nor discourages the practice of weather modification. The activities of WMO with respect to weather modification are aimed at encouraging scientifically sound research projects and at guiding best practices for research and operational projects.

The topic of climate intervention, that is deliberate actions taken to mitigate the impact of climate change, is not the focus of this document. Weather modification is focused on local to regional spatial scales and corresponding timescales, while climate intervention is primarily focused on the global scale and climate timescales. While there can be regions of overlap between weather modification and climate intervention (e.g. marine cloud brightening), the purpose of this document is to present the status of weather modification.

The factsheet for the statement on Weather Modification can be found here.