Programme Al Ghait-Morocco Winter Snowpack Augmentation Project: A Cooperative Project Between the Kingdom of Morocco and the United States

摘要

From 1984 to 1989 the Governments of Morocco and the United States cooperated in Programme Al Ghait to investigate the feasibility of augmenting water supplies in Morocco through weather modification. A demonstration project was set up in the upper Oum er Rbia basin. Promising cloud formations were treated with silver iodide released from aircraft and, beginning in 1987, from a network of ground-based generators. Clouds were seeded on 144 days over the five winters of operations. The project provided Morocco with its first weather radar and its first airborne system for collection of cloud physics data. Scientific studies by Reclamation and its contractors and Moroccan scientists concentrated on the seedability of clouds over the Atlas Mountains and statistical methods of evaluating effects of cloud seeding. Seedable conditions, as indicated by the presence of supercooled liquid water in clouds at concentrations up to 0.7 g/cu m at temperatures down to -12 C, were found to occur on 15 to 30 days per winter. The evaluation studies, which were based on a target-control design using streamflow as the response variable, indicated the report covers the project design, the contributions of the two Governments involved, the development of Moroccan institutions to handle such a complex program, the technology transfer and scientific studies accomplished, and the results of the streamflow and economic analyses using models.