A memory, an ideal, a proposition

In this project, three clouds that changed the world are re-assembled. The material composition of the original clouds is reconstituted, and the conditions necessary for the cloud formation are applied.

The clouds created for this project are models of: a cloud that formed in the past (a memory), a cloud that formed in a lab (an ideal), and a cloud proposed to be created (a proposition). These particular clouds have transformed how we think about climate, technology, and the human command over nature. By examining their material composition and the conditions in which they formed, the project aims to rethink the reality of the geological and social transformations they paved the way for.

Clouds fundamentally acquire characteristics of the ground below them. Particles at the centre of cloud droplets are traces of natural and human activity. Every cloud is thus a material memory of one unique assembly of what David Gissen calls “socio-nature.” To paraphrase Gissen, each cloud is more than a sum of gasses, matter and forces: it “contains within it the tragedies and successes of the social transformation of nature that exist wherever human experience appears.”11David Gissen, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment, and Urban Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

Date: 5 April 1815

Location: A volcano known as Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia, producing a cloud that formed initially over the entire country, then spread along the equator and later to the North and South Poles, covering the globe with a single continuous veil suspended in the stratosphere for months.

Chemical composition: The cloud condensation nuclei in Cloud A are pulverized rock particles emitted from Mount Tambora during the volcano’s eruption. They were made of black, glassy, biotite-bearing ne-trachyandesite, a highly unusual rock type. Forty-two cubic miles of this rock was emitted into the atmosphere, along with 55 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas that combined with hydroxide gas in the stratosphere to form sulfuric acid, which condensed into tiny droplets.

Effects: The immediate effects of the cloud were widespread and lasted several years. It created an agricultural disaster, with food riots and epidemics breaking out throughout Europe. Red and brown snow fell throughout the year in Europe and Asia. The weather presented “the appearance of vast & dreadful desolation” (as Mary Shelley notes in her journal) and inspired many expressions of anxiety and dread, including the literary creations of Frankenstein and Dracula. The use of carmine by artists increased, a reflection of the increased frequency of scarlet sunsets. A century and a half later, scientists discovered that Cloud A caused a climate anomaly, reflecting sunlight back into space and cooling the globe by 0.7–1.3 °F.

Date: 1946

Location: The cloud formed in a “cold box” at the General Electric Research lab in Schenectady, New York. The GE cold box soon became a cornerstone of cloud research, which eventually turned into “Project Cirrus,” a weather modification program conducted in collaboration with the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force.

Chemical composition: One hundred grams of dry ice seeded the first cloud created in the GE lab. “Ice-nucleating” particles, such as dry ice, induce water to condense into cloud droplets, and to freeze at higher than normal temperatures, producing precipitation. On 13 November 1946, Dr. Vincent Schaefer and Dr. Bernard Vonnegut (the brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut) successfully induced rain in a cloud —“an unsuspecting cloud over the Adirondacks”22Joe Chew, Storms Above the Desert: Atmospheric Research in New Mexico 1935–1985 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987): 21.—and the results were dramatic enough to warrant the creation of a program for modifying the weather. The Cloud B model uses Pseudomonas syringae bacteria, biological ice-nucleation particles whose role in cloud formation has only recently been discovered.

Effects: Cloud B captured the excitement of the moment, promising to control the weather—and to fulfill the dream of meteorological researchers and military leaders alike. The full command of natural resources through technological means seemed to be just around the corner. But clouds outside of the cold box proved impossible to master. Within a few years the discovery of chaos theory described a fundamental limit on predicting and controlling natural systems.

Date: 2018

Location: Eight miles above the ground, Tucson, Arizona

Chemical composition: One hundred grams of calcium carbonate is proposed to be sprayed into the stratosphere as part of the first field test in Solar Radiation Management research. SRM proposals aim to counteract global warming by shielding the Earth from the sun by creating aerosol clouds in the stratosphere. The project was green-lighted in November 2016, and will be conducted in the next eighteen months, after years of controversy over the proposal. Different particles will be tested during the research, including diamond dust and sulfates, which mimic material emitted during volcanic eruptions.

Effects: The effects of geoengineering research are difficult to predict. The physical impact on the atmosphere is expected to be entirely benign. But it is the social impacts of going down the geoengineering path that are a greater cause for concern and debate.