Can we stop the rain?

Can we stop the rain?

Author: BBC World Service August 8, 2025 Duration: 32:21

CrowdScience listener Rit, from Pune in India, is staring out of his window at the falling rain. It’s been pouring for four days now, and shows no sign of stopping. The laundry is piling up, all his shoes are wet, and he’s worried about the effect it’s having on the environment, and on agriculture. When it rains like this, the animals suffer, and the crops are destroyed.

Cloud seeding and Weather Engineering are hot topics right now, and can bring the rain to places that need it. But Rit wants to know whether we can artificially stop the pouring rain, especially in an emergency. Following the devastating floods in Texas, it’s clearly not just a problem for countries with a monsoon season.

Presenter Chhavi Sachdev is also sitting in a downpour at home in Mumbai. She dons her rain jacket and rubber boots to try and find out whether science can help Rit with his question. From controlling the clouds in India, to bringing rain to the deserts of the UAE, to firing high-powered lasers into the skies above Geneva, we find out what weather engineering is really capable of.

With thanks to:

Dr Thara Prabhakaran, from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

Alya Al Mazroui, Director of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science

Jean-Pierre Wolf, Applied Physics Department of the University of Geneva

Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev Producer: Emily Knight Series Producer: Ben Motley

(Image: Girl carrying umbrella while standing on road against trees during rainfall. Credit: Cavan Images/Getty Images)


Curiosity drives discovery, and CrowdScience from the BBC World Service is built entirely on that principle. Each episode begins not with a scripted lesson, but with a question sent in by a listener from anywhere in the world. These aren't simple queries with easy answers; they are the wonderfully complex, often quirky puzzles about everyday phenomena and cosmic mysteries that make us all stop and wonder. What does silence sound like? Could we ever photosynthesize like plants? How does a crowd's mood physically spread? The team then embarks on a genuine investigative journey, tracking down the specialists at the very edge of our understanding-neuroscientists, ecologists, physicists, and engineers-to piece together credible, compelling answers. Listening to this podcast feels like having a direct line to the labs and field sites where knowledge is being created. The conversations are deep yet accessible, transforming abstract concepts into relatable stories. It’s a collective exploration where listener curiosity sets the agenda, making each episode a unique and democratic look at the machinery of our world and beyond. You become part of a global community pondering life, Earth, and the universe, one thoughtful question at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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