X - CONCLUSION 



Contract DA 36 -039 -sc- 15345 (the last of a series) terminates Sept- 

 ember 30, 1952, after a little over five years of the active life of Project 

 Cirrus as a government -sponsored activity. Ey that time all the early 

 exploratory phases of cloud seeding and allied research concerned with 

 the physics of clouds were virtually complete. So many other research 

 projects had been stimulated that continued progress in the search for 

 new basic knowledge of weather phenomena seems assured. 



OVER -ALL RESULTS 



It is not, of course, easy to predict the ultimate results of the 

 work done by Project Cirrus. But it seems certain that the pioneering 

 and spectacular work of the General Electric scientists in cloud physics, 

 cloud seeding and weather modification will eventually have a profound 

 influence on domestic and world economics. 



Says the report accompanying S.2225 (footnote page 69): 



"If practical, weather control promises tremendous 

 benefits for a small investment. Research work in the 

 field involves no test plants or production facilities and 

 very little expensive equipment. The seeding agents, car- 

 bon dioxide or silver iodide, are inexpensive, yet when used 

 in small quantities they apparently produce weather phenomena 

 of the highest magnitude. If these phenomena cause only a 

 small increase in precipitation, this small increase can be 

 economically important. 



"An inch of rain, converted into runoff and concentrated 

 into a reservoir, can produce electric power worth hundreds 

 of thousands of dollars. A small fraction of an inch of extra 

 rain, falling on crops during the period of germination, can 

 greatly increase crop yields. But artificial nucleation may 

 have useful potentialities in addition to that of stimulating 

 rainfall. It may have possibilities for increasing snowpack 

 in mountainous areas", for holding back and 'softening' rain- 

 storms, thereby reducing soil erosion, for inhibiting hail, for 

 breaking up hurricanes, and for precipitating out and thereby 

 cutting holes in clouds so that aircraft can operate." 



Some of the possibilities inherent in cloud seeding as evaluated 

 by Project Cirrus scientists follow: 



Widespread Weather Modification . The results of the various New 

 Mexico tests, coupled with observations of the effects of other ground 

 seeding with silver iodide, point to significant possibilities in the 



