A New Hail Suppression Project Using Aircraft
"NON-REVIEWED" ,’-~RIL 2000 [(RAUSS ET A NEWHAIL SUPPRESSIONPROJECT USING AIRCRAFTSEEDING IN ARGENTINA by ¯ Terry W. Krauss* RoelofT. Bruintjes HugoMartinez WeatherModification Inc. National Centerfor Atmos- UniversidadNacional de Fargo, North Dakota pheric Research Cuyo - CONICET Boulder, Colorado Mendoza,Argentina INTRODUCTION OPERATIONALSEEDING PROGRAMDETAILS The Province of Mendozain western Argentina (32 S., 68 deg W.) is one of the most hail prone The current operational seeding period is from areas of the world. Lossesto agriculture dueto October15 th to April 1~t. Themain radar is cen- hail historically are >10%of total annualagricul- trally located at Cruz Negra(33.447 deg south, tural production. The region is knownas the 68.967 deg west) near Tunuyan.The project area "Landof Wine"and the principal crops are grapes covers the three agricultural oasesof Mendoza- plus a large variety of fruit andvegetables (e.g. SanMartin in the north, Tunuyanin the center, apples, cherries, peaches,apricots, plums,mel- and SanRafael in the south. A mapof Mendoza ons, garlic, tomatoes). Theprovince comprises province and the target oasesis shownin Fig- diverse territory of mountains,upland areas, and ure 1. The programconsists of 3 Piper Cheyenne plains. The western border of Mendozais occu- II seedingaircraft, 1 LearJet research-seederair- pied by the mainAndean cordillera, with a number craft, two C-band weather radars with TITAN of peaks above 6400m.Climatic conditions are processingand display software, two Vaisala ra- ¯semi-arid, andthe annualrainfall for the Capital diosondesystems, plus all the necessarystaff. City Mendozais 200 mm. TwoCheyenne II are stationed at SanRafael, the Hail suppression programsus- ing Russian rocket technology have been conductedin the re- gion since 1985with someinter- ruptions (Makitov 1999).
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