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Future Clouds: diatoms, speculation and weather modification 
 

 

 

Benjamin Kidder Hodges 

University of Macau 

bhodges@um.edu.mo 

 

 

 

Copyright© 2023 Benjamin Kidder Hodges. This text may be ar-

chived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, 

provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee 

is charged, in accordance with our Creative Commons Licence. 

 

 

 

Abstract: This article uses diatoms and the role they play in cloud formation as a prompt to consider 

histories of weather modification in practice, science fiction and possible future applications to address 

climate change. Diatoms are a form of microalgae that are present in all waterways and contribute 

significantly to atmospheric oxygen. They also provide condensation nuclei around which water droplets 

form, effectively creating clouds. Such naturally occurring particulate matter interacts with intentional 

and unintentional anthropogenic influence on the atmosphere. The long history of folk speculation and 

scientific experimentation about effective ways of seeding clouds for rain can help us consider the 

potential impacts of new forms of atmospheric intervention. From the use of algae as a tool for 

bioremediation to marine cloud brightening techniques, a multiscalar ecological awareness needs to be 

publicly fostered in making choices about how to influence climate futures.  

 

Keywords: diatoms, algae, cloud formation, climate futures, atmospheres 

 

 

Grains of Stone 

 

“That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above.” 

(Steele R. & Singer 1928, 486) 

 

This quote is an extended English translation of the much paraphrased line ‘as above, so below’ attributed 

to Hermes Trismegistus and his ancient treatise known as the Emerald Tablet. Such ancient celestial 

speculation so popular with alchemists and occultists may not be as influential today but it is a reminder 

of the interrelations between the sea and sky, the atmosphere and land.  

 

These days, we rely on other tools to make sense of atmospheres. On one level, this might involve just a 

quick Google search or glance at a weather app to see news about the coming week. At another scale, 

there is peering into the deep time of climate futures, of possible natural disasters and global catastrophes. 

If we turn away from our screens for a moment and look back at the sky, we might be surprised to see 

algae play a previously overlooked role in shaping the clouds on the horizon. 

 

mailto:bhodges@um.edu.mo


 

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Recent research has discovered the prevalence of a wide variety of algae, diatoms and microbes in the 

atmosphere. This organic matter in the atmosphere contributes to the density of cloud formation. In one 

study, researchers collected cloud and rain water samples from around Puy de Dome Mountain in central 

France and found a diverse collection of living microorganisms (Dillon et al. 2020). In framing the 

importance of their study these researchers emphasize a better understanding of, “these aeolian dispersed 

organisms is needed to understand their ecology, as well as how they could affect ecosystems and human 

health” (2020, 1). Another study has shown how atmospheric aerosols, including fresh water diatoms, 

from Africa are born through trade winds to the western equatorial North Atlantic Ocean where they play 

a significant role in contributing iron into the marine ecosystem. The prevalence of aerosolized organic 

matter in the atmosphere has also been studied in terms of the influence of virus infections on 

phytoplankton (Diaz et al. 2023). Viruses play a role in how much organic matter is subsequently turned 

into cloud condensation nuclei (2023).  

 

An example of such viral inflections and their effect on cloud 

formation can be seen in the diatom known as Emiliania 

huxleyi, or E. huxleyi, a single-celled phytoplankton. E. 

huxleyi surround themselves with coccoliths, or ‘grains of 

stone,’ calcium carbonate plates that together form into a 

coccosphere. Viral infection of E. huxleyi "leads to bloom 

demise and results in E. huxleyi cell death and enhanced 

shedding of coccoliths into the seawater.” (Trainic et al., 

2018, p. 328). Some of these shedded coccoliths drift down 

to the seabed while other broken and discarded coccoliths 

make it into the atmosphere, tossed skyward by sea foam and 

waves (2018). These tiny, light coccoliths then drift around in 

the currents of the atmosphere. Caught up in the wind, they 

provide surfaces for condensation to form and therein help 

create clouds. Paradoxically they can also have the opposite 

effect, breaking up clouds and preventing rainfall.  

 

As an anthropologist interested in parallels between folklore, mythology and the history of science, 

learning of this role diatoms play has led me to wonder about past and future attempts to influence the 

weather. In folk traditions, a whole variety of rituals, dances and customs, have been used as proactive 

measures to call for rain in the face of drought. In the Balkan peninsula there are a variety of related 

practices for rainmaking. In Bulgaria, the practice known as peperuda (butterfly) involved a young 

woman dressed up in a costume made from plants who then travels door to door in the village with the 

community pouring water on them (Petroff, 1957). James George Frazer writing in The Golden Bough 

(1889), would call such practices ‘sympathetic magic’ pointing out that they rely on imitation or a logic 

of contagion to be effective. Frazer’s attempt to create a comparative catalog of magic, dedicates a 

chapter to ‘The Magical Control of the Weather.’ Subsequent scholarship has rightly critiqued the 

armchair Eurocentrism of Frazer’s interpretation of indigenous practices as ‘failed science’ (Kumar 

2016). As seen in the work of Michael Taussig, there is still a need to think through the mimetic powers 

of magic, ritual and images (Taussig 1993). Whether such traditional practices are effective triggers of 

precipitation is not really the point. What is important is that they are expressions of atmospheric 

attunement and part of a common cause to try and understand and influence the weather.   

 

This diverse global history of folk rainmaking traditions predicts later scientific attempts to understand 

cloud formation. The relationship between such speculation and science can be more a continuum than 

 

Figure 1 - Emiliania huxleyi 



 

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a clear cut boundary. Speculation about the world can be a spur that prompts more rigorous scientific 

investigation. Even though looking at clouds in wonder is a common childhood memory, most of us 

don’t go on to pursue degrees in meteorology; nonetheless, that initial sense of wonder and curiosity can 

fuel continued study of the atmosphere. 

 

 

Speculative History 

 

 

Knowledge of the role diatoms play in cloud formation comes after a long line of speculation and largely 

unsuccessful attempts to deliver on the promise of weather manipulation. In the 19th century, 

‘rainmakers,’ charlatans, and confidence men traveled the arid regions of the North American west and 

Australian outback, with elaborate elixirs and contraptions meant to seed clouds with rain for ailing crops. 

While largely ineffective or at best inconsistent at curing drought, these early interventions into the 

atmosphere did unwittingly predict the importance of cloud condensation nuclei such as the coccoliths 

of diatoms. 

 

Clement Wragge, an Australian meteorologist, put his weight and reputation behind the ‘Steiger Vortex’ 

a conical device he had seen used in Austria to disperse clouds that threatened grapes still on the vine 

with destructive hail. Wragge manufactured his own large rainmaking canons in Australia as a means of 

combating the drought that was affecting Australia at the time. Unfortunately, when they were fired in 

1902 they didn’t have the desired effect with a couple even exploding. Wragge attributed this to too much 

explosive being used and a lack of a consistent firing routine (Sinnamon, 2017). The fact that each 5-

meter-tall device was labeled with the names of the key parties involved, Wragge, Stiger, Philip, Harvey, 

Suschnig or Leahy, surely added to the ignominy of this failed experiment. Nonetheless, the knowledge 

that the addition of particulate into the air could trigger participation was part of the best understanding 

of cloud formation at time.  

 

Figure 2 - Battery of Stiger Vortex rain-making guns at Charleville, Australia 1902 



 

115 

 

 

In his book Rain Produced at Will published in 1891, Louis Gathmann first outlines the science of 

seeding clouds, a theory that he could not implement at the time but that would later be put into practice. 

Gathmann foresaw techniques for fog dispersal that could save ships edging too close to shore and clear 

London’s legendary fog. Cloud seeding was seen as more than just an agricultural concern. It was also 

not always an innocent act. It has been used by states as a tool of war and propaganda as well as a way 

to mitigate the effects of drought and storms. During the Vietnam War, ‘Project Popeye’ was a US 

military project designed to prolong monsoon rain along the Ho Chi Minh trail with the aim to reduce 

the mobility of North Vietnamese troops (Darack, Ed. 2019). Before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the 

Beijing Weather Modification Office used rockets to release silver iodide into the skies outside of the 

city, in order to keep the opening ceremony free of rain. This practice, known as ‘blueskying,’ is aimed 

at bolstering China’s internal profile when hosting large scale events and foreign dignitaries (Chien 

2019). 

 

The U.S. government’s project to influence the weather began in collaboration with GE (General 

Electric). This joint project known as ‘Project Cirrus,’ grew out of earlier study of aerosols and began 

with a stated initial goal of finding a solution for de-icing airplane wings. One of the research associates 

in the project, Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer, later chanced on the discovery that dry-ice could be used 

effectively as a technique for cloud seeding. Initial experiments in the lab with dry-ice (carbon dioxide 

in its frozen form) were soon after put into practice with the first successful seeding of snow fall over 

Mt. Greylock Massachusetts in 1946 (Tietz, 2022). The project subsequently evolved into an attempt to 

alter the path of, or otherwise modify, hurricanes using silver iodide as a form of artificial cloud 

condensation nuclei. This hurricane focus was stalled soon after but taken up again with ‘Project 

Stormfury’ in 1962. Experiments with anthropogenic weather modification work much like coccoliths, 

sand, and other naturally occurring particulate matter; by introducing more particulate into the 

atmosphere they create more nuclei on which condensation can form.  

 

These early weather modification experiments also have an interesting parallel with and influence on 

science fiction. Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard Vonnegut played a leading role in the GE project. Kurt 

Vonnegut, himself, also worked for a period as an in-house writer for GE. He later incorporated a 

speculative version of these weather experiments in his novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) in the form of ‘cloud-

nine’ a military developed substance that could turn water into ice at room temperature.  

In science fiction we find a whole host of gaseous clouds and atmospheric effects that were used to 

control people, the planet and alien worlds. In H.G. Wells’ influential The War of the Worlds (1898) 

extraterrestrials use a variety of tools to exterminate earth’s population with one of them being canisters 

of ‘black smoke.’  M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901) chronicles an expedition to the North Pole 

which unleashes a deadly purple cloud that spreads around the world to devastating effect. In the 1957 

scifi novel The Black Cloud author Fred Hoyle tells of a giant sentient black cloud that comes to rest in 

between the earth and sun threatening all life on earth. In more recent clifi (climate fiction), the threat no 

longer comes from other worlds but instead from the out of control impact of human life on the 

environment. In Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock (2021), cloud formation on a global scale is 

proactively used to stave off the effects of global warming by increasing the albedo or reflectivity of 

clouds against solar radiation. The termination shock of the title refers to the disastrous effects of such 

solar geoengineering if they are not maintained and abruptly stop. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry 

of the Future (2020) waters around the North Pole are dyed yellow to effect their albedo and thereby help 

stay iceberg melt and in his Mars trilogy of books he considers the terraforming of Mars and the challenge 

of making it hospitable for human life.     

 



 

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These more recent science fiction scenarios both predict and warn about the unintended impacts of 

geoengineering. Part of the appeal and temptation of weather modification is that it can be bounded and 

controlled. What if we were able to wield the power of diatoms to create localized weather? The perpetual 

rain cloud pictured above a particularly grumpy cartoon character could be a reality. Like the enclosed 

microclimates of greenhouses, control of specific small areas of the atmosphere might also be useful in 

tending to future crops and gardens, but at what cost? 

 

 

Experimental futures 

 

 

Recently researchers off the coast of Australia have experimented with the first use of cloud brightening 

technology to combat coral bleaching (Bay et al. 2019). The trial worked by atomizing seawater to turn 

bits of sea salt crystals into cloud condensation nuclei. These thickened and in turn more reflective clouds 

bounce more sunlight away from reefs suffering from higher water temperatures. While the long term 

impact of such localized marine cloud brightening is not known, it is no longer just the stuff of science 

fiction.    

 

At the same time as it is important to be wary of any unintended ecological impacts of geoengineering it 

is also necessary to keep these separate from conspiratorial visions of secret government weather 

manipulation campaigns. Such conspiratorial thinking still abounds in theories of so-called ‘chemtrails.’ 

Conspiracy theorists believe that contrails, the clouds formed in the wake of airplane engines are part of 

a sinister government conspiracy to poison and control the general population (Tingley & Wagner, 2017). 

In fact, such contrails are simply ‘homogenitus’ as classified by the World Meteorological Organization 

in the International Cloud Atlas. They are a kind of anthropogenic cirrus cloud without any malevolent 

agenda. Such clouds are also visible in the exhaust from shipping boats and a source of inspiration for 

new ideas about how to combat climate change. Researchers have speculated on using hundreds of so-

called ‘albedo yachts’ circulating around the world’s oceans (Latham et al., 2012). These boats would 

emit atomized sea spray to create new cloud cover and cool off the planet.   

 

The ethical dimensions of such geoengineering have been taken up earlier by none other than Wilhelm 

Reich, Freud’s protégé and infamous theorist of orgone energy. Reich was invested in trying to solve the 

problem of desertification which he believed was brought on by ‘DOR (deadly orgone radiation).’ To 

combat this process, Reich developed his ‘cloudbuster’ device. Developed in the 1950s and later 

immortalized in Kate Bush’s song ‘Cloudbusting,’ the device used long tubes to draw Reich’s theorized 

orgone energy out of bodies of water and pass it into the sky at Orgonon, his farm and research center in 

the US state of Maine.  

 

Reich, while wrong about the mechanism of cloud formation, did show a real intuition as to the 

interaction between clouds and bodies of water. We are left to wonder what Reich would have made of 

the revelation that algae is more of a connective element than orgone energy. One thing Reich did leave 

us with is a manual or manifesto on the ethics of geoengineering. He published his own Rules to Follow 

in Cloud Engineering in 1954. The 15 rules begin with the rather direct admonishment to “Shed all 

ambition to impress anyone” (Reich 1954). Alongside a whole variety of safety warnings he also includes 

a reminder that “In cloud engineering you do not ‘create rain,’ - you do not ‘destroy clouds,’ - briefly, 

you are not playing God. What you do is solely helping nature on its natural course” (1954). The ethical 

and safety concerns in Reich’s imagined cloud engineering presage debates around solar geoengineering 



 

117 

 

and other proposed solutions for global warming. Reduced to a simple maxim, one must be careful about 

the unintended impact of proposed solutions. 

 

This history of cloud busting and weather manipulation isn’t just a story of failure and fantasy. These 

speculative devices hold grains of truth and spurred future variations that ultimately proved more 

effective. Looking to future projects, we can consider how diatoms might help us think about links 

between the sea and sky in new ways. What strange devices might be created to draw them out, to disperse 

them in the atmosphere or spread them out into new environs? 

 

In fact algae, in their many forms, already play an important role in water cycles and the atmosphere. 

With their intricate silica outer layers, diatoms contribute significantly to atmospheric oxygen and 

sequester carbon dioxide carrying some of it into the deep sea. They were also once a source of wonder 

for hobbyists in Victorian Britain, who carefully arranged them into microscopic patterns, some of them 

presumably more interested in their visual characteristics than their role in the environment. More 

recently, they have also been studied as tools for bioremediation in the removal of heavy metals from 

polluted waterways. International researchers working with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea 

Research have experimented with diatoms as an alternative to other bioremediation processes reliant on 

large amounts of fresh water (Hedayatkhah et al, 2018). A byproduct of the process is the creation of 

lipids that could serve as potential biofuel (2018). Diatoms have also been studied by a trio of Indian 

biologists, Thomas Thomas Kiran Marella, Mallimadugula Venkata Bhaskar and Archana Tiwari, as a 

remediation solution for eutrophication or the presence of too many nutrients in freshwater lakes due to 

fertilizer runoff (Marella et al, 2016).  

 

With just a bit of speculative imagination we can begin to envision a near future where diatoms are used 

to seed clouds in a form of atmospheric bioremediation. Taking inspiration from this latest research on 

algae and historic cases of cloud seeding, such an imagined future is a chance to consider the biological, 

political and social implications of algae bioremediation both at sea and in the sky.  

 

In considering future prospects of such intervention into the climate, we might learn a lesson from E. 

huxleyi. We can build protective walls and environments around ourselves but we would do well to 

remember that these materials will outlast us. Like the remnants of coccolith spheres, they will stick 

around and find their way into waterways, winds and atmospheres. They will impact the peoples, algae 

and clouds of the future.  

 

 

Thinking at scale 

 

 

Controlling the weather may be the wrong way to be thinking about future clouds and climates. Instead 

of devices and tools to empower bioremediation of atmospheres and waterways with algae, perhaps we 

should be simply trying to think of new means of being able to see the microscopic and multiscalar 

connections already happening in multispecies worlds. Being able to both see and narrate these 

relationships is one of our biggest challenges. How can we predict the future if we can’t even see it? 

 

Science fiction, folk practices and popular science scholarship can all help us begin to see and take note 

of the vast scale of interrelationships between the microscopic and the global, between things too small 

to see and things too big to see. Multiscalar stories are needed to help us comprehend our intended and 

unintended anthropogenic influence.   



 

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A good example of this kind of public science storytelling comes from the British biologist and 

anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley, for whom E. huxleyi are named. He famously used his lecture in 

1868 entitled ‘On a Piece of Chalk,’ to inspire a general audience in Norwich, England to think about 

diatoms. He directed the audience to consider the very earth beneath their feet and how it was formed 

over millennia through the slow collection of a mass of coccoliths on an ancient sea floor. Under that 

audience were the same white chalk deposits that are on display at the Great Cliffs of Dover, deposits 

that stretch all the way to continental Europe. Those hulking white cliffs of Dover are also made of some 

of the same matter that floats above them, creating microscopic cloud condensation nuclei around which 

water droplets form causing clouds to appear. They are also made of the same stuff as the professor’s 

chalk, a finite resource hoarded by mathematicians and other academics who have come to rely on the 

chalkboard as a primary tool of scholarship and education. These are the kinds of interrelationships that 

we need science scholarship and good stories to understand.  

 

In spite of the best efforts of Huxley to make the general 

public aware of diatoms, E. huxleyi and other diatoms remain 

largely absent from the public imagination. Perhaps it is 

because individually they exist at a microscopic scale where 

they can be easily overlooked and ignored. They do, 

however, also collectively form into large algae blooms that 

can be seen from space. Their silica based coccolith shells 

reflect sunlight creating huge swaths of aquamarine waters, 

swirls of color more associated with tropical seas than the 

North Atlantic. These massive algae blooms change the 

albedo of the water, transforming how much sunlight is 

reflected back. Clearly, diatoms have a large impact even if 

their net effect on the climate is not precisely known by 

scientists or acknowledged by the general public. 

 

 

Into this gap in understanding and awareness, there is a place to try again to imagine new devices and 

means of drawing public attention to the diatoms beneath their feet and aloft above them. Conspiratorial 

worries about government seeding of clouds can be turned into a proactive collective reimagining of 

what part we all might play in creating sustainable climates and new clouds in the future.  

 

 

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Figure 3 - Emiliania huxleyi bloom off the 

coast of France 



 

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Benjamin Kidder Hodges is an artist and anthropologist originally from Richmond, Virginia whose 

research based art and writing draw on folklore, mythology and media archaeology to call attention to 

overlooked histories. This involves building links between material culture and lived affects from bore-

dom to shock. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Macau where he teaches 

filmmaking, media studies, and cultural studies within the Department of Communication.