Experience of Cloud Seeding to Extinguish Wildfires in Siberia and the Far East in 2017–2021: Preliminary Results and Performance Assessment Issues

Abstract— Since 1968, the Aerial Forest Protection Service (Avialesookhrana) has taken measures to extinguish wildfires and reduce fire danger in adjacent areas by rainmaking with methods and technologies of precipitation enhancement developed at Roshydromet research institutions. The efficiency of the performed modification is analyzed in the absence of a network of Doppler weather radars, as well as in conditions of a sparse ground-based weather station network in most of Siberia and the Far East. Due to the significant spatial variability of precipitation, the floating control method was applied using data of numerical weather prediction models. The analysis of precipitation enhancement activities demonstrated a rather high efficiency of applying this method: the actual amount of precipitation was 1.4–1.5 times higher than the expected amount averaged according to the forecast models.