Editing Project Stormfury (section)

{{short description|NOAA weather modification program.}}
[[Image:Project Stormfury crew.jpg|thumb|1966 photo of the crew and personnel of Project Stormfury]]
'''Project Stormfury''' was an attempt to weaken [[tropical cyclone]]s by flying aircraft into them and [[cloud seeding|seeding]] them with [[silver iodide]]. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983. The hypothesis was that the silver iodide would cause [[supercooling|supercooled]] water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane, and this led to seeding several Atlantic hurricanes. However, it was later shown that this hypothesis was incorrect. It was determined that most hurricanes do not contain enough supercooled water for cloud seeding to be effective. Additionally, researchers found that unseeded hurricanes often undergo the same [[eye (cyclone)#Eyewall replacement cycles|structural changes]] that were expected from seeded hurricanes. This finding called Stormfury's successes into question, as the changes reported now had a natural explanation.

The last experimental flight was flown in 1971, due to a lack of candidate storms and a changeover in [[NOAA]]'s fleet. Project Stormfury was officially canceled more than a decade after the last modification experiment. Although the project failed to achieve its goal of reducing the destructiveness of hurricanes, its observational data and storm lifecycle research helped improve meteorologists' ability to forecast the movement and intensity of hurricanes.