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Statistic evaluation of low-frequency acoustic wave impact on rainfall stimulation

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Abstract

For securing more water resources, traditional solutions including seawater desalination are limited due to high cost and restricted operating conditions. Thus, acoustic stimulation of rainfall is a potential alternative method due to its low cost and convenient operation. Low-frequency acoustic fields can be used to stimulate rainfall through evoking wavy motion of air particles in clouds which will significantly enhance the process of collision coalescence of cloud droplets and lead to their volume increase. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of rational methods to evaluate the effect of acoustic enhancement of rainfall in field experiments. To this end, in this study, nearly two-month field experiments of acoustic rainfall enhancement with 39 trials were carried out by our research team in the Tibetan Plateau. Statistical analysis was applied to evaluate the effect of acoustic wave on precipitation stimulation. The results of average rainfall intensity distribution using ordinary least square analysis disclose that acoustic interference has a considerable effect on rainfall enhancement. Such a rainfall enhancement effect increases significantly along with the increase of rainfall duration which is the index of cloud precipitation potential. For rainfall events with the duration more than two hours, the average rainfall intensity was improved by 72% with the acoustic wave effect at the experiment site. The phenomena are consistent with the fact that clouds with larger precipitation potential contain more cloud droplets which are beneficial to the acoustic coagulation process.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91747205). We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers who offered the insightful comments leading to improvement of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Mengyao Wang, Ji Chen & Jiaye Li

  2. School of Environment and Civil Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, 523808, Dongguan, China

    Jiaye Li

  3. School of Water Resources and Electric Power, The University of Qinghai, 810016, Xining, China

    Jinzhao Wang & Hongwei Xie

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  1. Mengyao Wang
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Correspondence to Ji Chen or Jiaye Li.

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Wang, M., Chen, J., Li, J. et al. Statistic evaluation of low-frequency acoustic wave impact on rainfall stimulation. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 37, 611–623 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-022-02283-2

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