hour of irradiance. Even ten hours later, the soil's warming effect, up to 2 C° in air just above the ground, would extend up as high as 60 m above the ground in the form of slightly elevated air temperatures. Fog dispersal is therefore one obvious possibility for SPS applications. Dispersal would come mainly because of convection triggered by heating the soil, as well as the air aloft, where the heating would contribute to breaking up the thermal inversion that acts as a lid on fog. It would also seem that atmospheric pollution could be reduced by having the SPS break up pollution-trapping thermal inversions aloft by creating chimneys in the atmospheric inversion. For this to happen, wind speeds must be low in the pollution layer, and clouds must be also present in order to enhance the RF energy transferred from the beam. C.6.2 Possible Other Effects of Microwave Transmission Meteorological effects other than atmospheric heating, however, may also be related to SPS microwave transmission. How cloud particles interact with one another may be affected by an intervening microwave beam with a powerful CW field similar in frequency to that of the electromagnetically radiating cloud particles. Cloud particle interactions affect the subsequent mechanisms of precipitation; this process must be considered in efforts to stimulate manmade rain. Interactions among cloud particles lead to electrostatic charging of the particles and a resulting change in ambient electric fields. Summertime precipitation reaching the ground comes after clouds have become strongly electrified. In their charged state and self-altered electrical environment, the electromagnetic- ally radiating cloud particles undergo changed hydrodynamic and aerodynamic interactions and consequent growth. Their growth rate and interactions, however, could be so altered by the SPS beam’s electromagnetic field as to trigger cloud growth and rainfall. Electrical forces in the cloud might be so altered by a properly tuned microwave beam as to overcome the natural dynamics normally present, for example, in nonprecipitating cumuli. These possibilities, nevertheless, are still mere conjectures. No firm physical basis is known today to support the proposition that an altered SPS could modify weather in a useful, practical, or substantial way, even in the distant future (circa 2040). To provide definitive answers regarding the feasibility of SPS-induced weather modification, we will require a far more detailed understanding of atmospheric processes and weather phenomena.
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