Rainmaking

Rainmaking, also known as artificial precipitation, artificial rainfall and pluviculture, is the act of attempting to artificially induce or increase precipitation, usually to stave off drought or the wider global warming. According to the clouds' different physical properties, this can be done using airplanes or rockets to sow to the clouds with catalysts such as dry ice, silver iodide and salt powder, to make clouds rain or increase precipitation, to remove or mitigate farmland drought, to increase reservoir irrigation water or water supply capacity, to increase water levels for hydropower generation, or even to solve the global warming problem.

In the United States, rainmaking was attempted by traveling showmen. It was practiced on the American frontier, but may have reached a peak during the Dust Bowl drought of the US west and midwest in the 1930s. The practice was depicted in the 1956 film The Rainmaker. Attempts to bring rain directly have waned with development of meteorology, laws against fraud, and improved weather forecasting, with some exceptions such as cloud seeding and forms of prayer including rain dances, which are still practiced today.