Personal Cloud Making Machine Lets You Modify The Weather

If you’ve ever visited or lived in the UK, then you’ll know it lives up to the cliche of people always talking about the weather. We can’t help it. It’s just so damn interchangeable. Look, it’s overcast! (again). Nope, now it’s raining—hang on, no, I can see the sun coming through the clouds. It’s like a small child who can’t make up its mind. So wouldn’t it be great if we could change the weather by ourselves so we were no longer subjected to the tyranny of weather patterns?

Changing the weather through human intervention is by no means a new idea. Everyone from the US military to the Chinese government has gotten involved in some way or another. And now artist Karolina Sobecka is joining this long lineage with her project Cloud Machine, a “personal device for weather modification.”

Created as part of the Blowup: Speculative Realities event it allows you to create clouds by sending Sobecka’s Cloud Machine device up into the air using a weather balloon. Then when it’s reached a certain height it starts sending out cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)—integral to making clouds—heat, and water vapor, which reacts with air moisture to create little clouds. Yes, it’s insane.

Sobecka explains that the idea is based on a “geo-engineering technique proposed to create brighter, more reflective clouds which shield earth from sun's radiation, and thus partly counteract the climate change.” Creative Applications explains how the device works in more detail and you can see it in action in the images below.

Images: Karolina Sobecka

[via Design Boom]

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