<\/p>\n
Skyward\u2019s diagrams show planes dropping particles into clouds to prevent cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in \u201chigh risk areas.\u201d The company also notes in the document that it uses artificial intelligence for a number of purposes, including forecasting lightning storms, prioritizing treatments, targeting storm cells, and optimizing flight paths.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harterre stressed that the company would deploy the technology judiciously and reserve it for storm events with elevated wildfire risk, adding that such storms account for less than 0.1% of lightning activity in a given area.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur objective is to reduce the probability of ignition on the limited number of extreme-risk days when fires threaten lives, critical infrastructure, and ecosystems, and when suppression costs and impacts can escalate rapidly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The document posted by the World Bank states that Skyward partnered with Alberta Wildfire in August of 2024 to \u201cprove suppression by plane and drone,\u201d and that its process produced a \u201c60-100% reduction\u201d in lightning compared with \u201ccontrol cells\u201d (which likely means storm cells that weren\u2019t seeded).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The document added that the company would be carrying out additional field trials in the summer of 2025 with the wildfire agencies in British Columbia and Alberta to \u201cprovide landscape level solutions with more advanced aircraft, sensors and forecasting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBC Wildfire Service is aware that Skyward is developing technology that aims to reduce instances of lightning in targeted situations,\u201d the British Columbia agency acknowledged in a statement provided to MIT Technology Review<\/em>. \u201cLast year, preliminary trials were conducted by Skyward to gain a better understand [sic] of the technology and its applicability in B.C. Should a project\/technology like this move forward in B.C., we would engage with the project team in an effort to learn and ensure we\u2019re using every tool available to us to respond to wildfire in B.C.\u201d<\/p>\n The BC agency declined to make anyone available for an interview and didn\u2019t respond to questions about what materials were used, where the tests were carried out, or whether it provided public disclosures or required the company to. Alberta Wildfire didn\u2019t respond to similar questions from MIT Technology Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n Clouds are just water in various forms\u2014vapor, droplets, and ice crystals, condensed enough to form the floating Rorschach tests we see in the sky. Within them, snowflakes and tiny ice pellets known as graupel rub together, causing atoms to trade electrons. This process creates highly reactive ions with negative and positive charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n Updrafts separate the light snowflakes from the graupel, building up larger differences in the charges across the electrical field until \u2026 crack! An electrostatic discharge occurs in the form of a lightning strike.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #startup #claims #stop #lightning #prevent #catastrophic #wildfires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Skyward\u2019s diagrams show planes dropping particles into clouds to prevent cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in \u201chigh…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1727,418,1726,265,1725,791,1728],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-catastrophic","tag-claims","tag-lightning","tag-prevent","tag-startup","tag-stop","tag-wildfires"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-144817694-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rising lightning risks<\/h3>\n