Extreme weather could be weaponised to fight World War 3, military experts have warned.
The experts have claimed weather could be enlisted to paralyse countries with apocalyptic flash floods or icy fogs. They claimed sabotaging meteorological conditions could "control enemies" as well as disrupt military operations during conflict, or even fall into use by terrorists in a bid to launch attacks.
Weather modification could lead to attempts to create more rain, preventing rain, reduce hail and even make snow or reduce hurricane severity. It has been used before, namely by China during the Olympics as well as by Vladimir Putin during one of his military parades. It comes after NATO scrambled warplanes as Russia shoots down West's F-16 fighter jet in Ukraine onslaught.
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But there are concerns whether weather sabotage could lead to events that "we have little control over." Should the technology be weaponised, it could be used to prevent rainfall over crops in a bid to starve a nation, or sparking floods to damage infrastructure.
In the event of a war, adverse weather could destroy fighter planes via hailstones and warships could be forced to have to navigate through icy fog. Dr Jim Flemming, a weather expert, told The US Sun: "The military in the Cold War era, the generals would say that if you can control the weather, you can control the world. You can control the enemy; you can do anything you want."
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an ex-chemical weapons advisor for the British military, told the outlet that weaponised weather could be a "very plausible" threat. He added: "You need the oxygen in a cloud to mix with a chemical to create a toxic substance – it would be very hit and miss.
But if you are not concerned about indiscriminate casualties and just want to create terror and fear, it could be pretty effective. If you seeded a cloud which then produced ‘acid-rain’ you could conceivably say it is a chemical weapon."
Dr Alan Robock, a Rutgers University scientist added: "On a battlefield, you could produce clouds of particles to try and obscure laser-guided weapons of your enemy."
Examples of weather manipulation includes "cloud seeding" that involves using pellets filled with chemicals in order to create more ice crystals and, therefore, increasing the chance of rainfall. Last year, Dubai experienced flash flooding amid claims it could have been caused by cloud seeding.
Johan Jaques, a meteorologist at tech company KISTERS, said: "The Dubai floods act as a stark warning of the unintended consequences we can unleash when we use such technology to alter the weather. Additionally, we have little control over the aftermath of cloud seeding.
"Where exactly is it going to be raining effectively? Using techniques such as cloud seeding to bring much-needed rainfall in one area can cause flash floods and droughts in another."
Dr Flemming warned in the "worst case scenario" that weather manipulation could be weaponised. He told The Sun: "I think you have to think of the worst case scenario which would be a rogue actor, whether it’s a rogue billionaire hoping to do good or a rogue nation – they could intervene.
"There’s this theory of nuclear winter, so you could trigger off some very adverse effects. But I see the risk as being too great. I see it as something that is not desirable at all."
He continued: "It’s the scale of what you would have to do that is sort of beyond even small countries. You need rich countries like China or the United States to develop a program over many years, and the only way it would make any sense is for all the countries to agree to do it."
