• Question: Will it ever be possible to make England less rainy and more sunny.

    Asked by Thomas to Ashley, Bernard, Carsten, MariaMagdalena, Monique on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Bernard Ennis

      Bernard Ennis answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      I like this question because there are no obvious answers, so I have to make things up and that’s what we call thinking out of the box. Perhaps you can think of a good answer to this problem in your class. The problem is that the UK (Scotland, Wales and Ireland are also rainy and not very sunny) is a bit far north to make it really sunny and it’s right on the edge of the ocean, so it’s the first bit of land that gets the rain. I can think of two good ways to remedy the situation:
      1) build a huge glass dome over the whole of the British Isles which will stop the rain from getting in. You could catch the rain in great big tanks and pump it around the country to make sure that crops grow and the beautiful countryside stays green (the benefit of lots of rain). The dome would have to be big enough to deflect the clouds away, so that the sunshine can get through.
      2) The other obvious answer would be to put a great big motor and rudder on the island somewhere in the north of Scotland and just sail the whole darn lot down to the Mediterranean for the winter. We could always sail back up again during the summer because it gets really hot down there and the grass turns brown.

    • Photo: Ashley Hughes

      Ashley Hughes answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      It may be possible by doing what the chinese have attempted in their country. They want it to rain in dry areas so they try to make clouds by seeding them with Silver nitrate (I think?) which help encourage clouds and thefore it rains…in theory. If we were to do this off the coast then perhaps it would rain before it got to the land and we would then have dry weather?

      Its a long shot, but get the cannons out! We should try it.

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