Anthropogenic climate change is transforming the human-weather relationship through increasingly frequent and severe weather events. In Asia alone, over 2000 people lost their lives in such events in 2023, with over 9 million directly affected by storms/flood1. In 2022, climate extremes pushed 56.8 million people in 12 countries into food insecurity, with global income reduced by 19% until 20502. While growing calls for climate intervention (or geoengineering) remain highly controversial, governments are exploring local and regional weather modification technologies. China, for instance, has been funding of a nation-wide cloud seeding program to enhance precipitation and mitigate hailstorms, and continues to upscale its operations3. In Japan, the national government has started funding a large-scale long-term project aiming to modify the weather as part of its Moonshot Goals4. Technologies include cloud seeding, large-scale arrays of wind turbines, ocean-based heat pumps, wave modification, and the use of offshore ‘sea curtains’ (Fig. 1). Cloud seeding technologies have traditionally been used for precipitation enhancement and hail suppression5, but cloud seeding for heavy rainfall mitigation are on the cutting edge of weather modification techniques. The program also foresees ‘typhoon control,’ which could mitigate the threat of catastrophic flooding and provide Japan with abundant renewable energy, contributing to a decarbonised energy society4. As the likelihood to enter the post-1.5 °C era of global warming increases, future human-weather relationships will not only be shaped by weather-related technologies, but also by their social implementation: whether and how they should be used, when, where, and who should make these choices? Should decisions be left to experts and governments, or can they be part of an innovative collective approach to weather management?

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
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Overall image of weather modification technologies developed within the Japanese government’s Moonshot R&D program to mitigate torrential rainfall disasters.

Challenges of technocratic weather modification

Weather modification science developed over 70 years ago. Yet, it remains fraught with uncertainties and risks, including risks of unintended impacts on ecosystems and on weather patterns beyond the target area5. Weather modification also raises governance issues, with impacts that could transcend local, regional and national boundaries, increasing geopolitical tensions3. Past efforts to modify the weather have been accompanied by a range of institutional and legal arrangements, including international agreements (e.g., Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques), and domestic legal frameworks. While development and implementation of weather modification is driven primarily by governments and the private sector, engagement with civil society has been limited.

Requirements for stakeholder and public engagement in weather modification decision making vary greatly between countries, and programs that empower local communities tend to have greater social license to operate. In the US, for instance, a limited number of states have participation procedures in place, and in Australia, public participation has been largely informal and reactive, affecting public trust in the technologies6. Although existing efforts tout the need for citizen participation, in many instances, their role is mostly seen as ‘service recipients’ in modification programs. Moreover, questions of responsibility in case of failures tend to be raised only after the fact, with scientific and legal uncertainties leaving affected communities without access to effective remedy. This further contributes to social tensions. As a result, existing approaches are likely to fall back on expert judgment in decision making, discouraging stakeholders from engaging in a dominantly technocratic process.

Climate intervention research and development is likely to mirror similar trajectories. Solar radiation management (SRM) is one such set of techniques investigated to counteract the effects of global warming, both at global and regional scales7. Research into planetary-scale SRM is highly controversial due to associated risks and governance challenges; for instance, concerns that such endeavors might undermine mitigation and adaptation efforts8, paradoxically making society more vulnerable to weather disasters. Where weather damage disproportionately affects the most vulnerable, it could also raise environmental justice concerns9. Regional-scale SRM to protect coral reefs, sea ice, or mitigate hurricanes have been less contentious7. For instance, marine cloud brightening—a climate intervention technique that involves spraying salt water aerosols into ocean clouds—is currently investigated to increase the reflectivity of the cloud cover and decrease sea surface temperatures10. Yet, recent studies show risks of climate teleconnections, whereby regional SRM would increase heat stress in locations remote from the target region11.

The allure of technocratic approaches for defending our societies from weather-related disasters may be obvious to their developers, government officials and those who experience extreme weather events firsthand. Yet, dependence on government and private sector-led weather modification technologies could dilute the human-weather relationship, thus distancing us physically and psychologically from the weather. Anthropologists have traced how people have developed the ability to live with the weather, its joys and risks, as part of a ‘weather world’12. As technology deeply affects how we relate to the world, introducing complex weather technologies risks displacing natural human-scale competencies so that activities people could once do at local levels (e.g., rice paddy dams or small-scale levees) become devalued or impossible (i.e., radical monopoly)13. This can also induce a disempowering feeling of humiliation and impotence (Promethean shame) as we realize that technologies can forecast, simulate, and intervene in weather events far beyond human cognitive or physical abilities14. To that extent, it is crucial that programs that contemplate countermeasures to disastrous rainfalls also consider pathways for transforming the human-weather relationship, from one characterized by fear and conflict to one of respect and beneficence. We thus propose ‘weather commons’ as a framework to facilitate such an approach.

Creating the weather commons

Here, we propose a commons-based approach towards the weather as a democratic, community-centric framework for a post 1.5 °C world. This framework poses an alternative to both technocratic or expert-driven weather modification and the outright rejection of such technologies. Commons are social systems in which resources are collectively used and managed in ways that foster cooperation, trust, and shared responsibility15. Strong scientific evidence documents many successful cases of communal, autonomous, and sustainable management of natural resources such as rivers, reservoirs, meadows, fisheries, and forests across the world15. The core characteristic is local people proactively and adaptively managing natural resources collectively through self-governing rules and customs developed over time. Proposed institutional conditions enabling long-term sustainability include the well-known design principles that won Elinor Ostrom the Nobel laureate in economic sciences16. Drawing on the rich insights of commons research across diverse cultures and regions provides a strong basis for designing democratic, community-driven stewardship for the weather.

Based on the above literature, we propose the tentative definition of weather commons as social-ecological systems that enable collective stewardship of weather-related resources and processes, by promoting cooperation and trust between actors across scales. Central to the commons approach are the social practices, known as commoning15,17, through which local people interact with, protect, and adaptively manage commons resources in everyday life. Figure 2 is a visualization of various practices of weather commoning based on a set of online workshops with interdisciplinary expert participants, which was facilitated by the authors in 2023–24. It shows that the weather commons framework includes various practices and techniques for dealing adaptively with weather and weather-related disasters—from ancient rain-making practices, traditional flood control systems that allow some inundation, such as discontinuous levees18, to rain gardens that regulate rainwater runoff while improving the scenery19. Such practices emerge from complex entanglements of cultural, social, ecological and spiritual factors, including local context, commoner identity, ethics and perceptions, local or scientific knowledge and technologies, and institutional arrangements (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Conceptual visualization of weather commoning practices.
Fig. 2: Conceptual visualization of weather commoning practices.
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This diagram is based on a series of facilitated online workshops in 2023–2024 with 15 experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds such as engineering, law, commons, geography, art and public governance. It is intended to be a tool for imagining, sharing, and developing the concept of weather commons with diverse stakeholders by visualizing the scope of what a “weather commons” could comprise. All elements are interconnected and interrelated, an assemblage which comes together to form the concept of weather commons.

The weather commons shed light on rich and human-scale relationships between people and weather otherwise overshadowed by technocratic applications of weather modification. Commons theory thus enables to examine critically technocratic approaches and their dominant position in the discourse by refocusing on practices of commoners and their intrinsic values of living with the weather. Moreover, it provides guidelines and visions for collaborative practices that can unite diverse actors, including governments and local communities, to address climate change and increasing extreme weather events in a post 1.5 °C world. Weather modification technologies should be positioned within this framework and used as a last resort when day-to-day practices reach their limits.

On the other hand, the concept of weather commons poses challenges. These limitations, long recognized in traditional commons theories, will require particular attention in the context of weather commons. Traditional commons theory primarily centers on small-scale management systems (local commons), where the rights to use and access natural resources are confined to specific groups or members20. In contrast, weather modification is typically undertaken on a larger scale, spanning multiple municipalities or river basins and involving a diverse array of stakeholders, including governments, communities and industries. These large-scale problems (central to regional or global commons) can lead to institutional mismatches across geographical and jurisdictional boundaries, often resulting in the emergence of uneven power relations21. A geopolitical analysis of weather modification highlights the potential marginalization of minorities, such as rural areas relative to urban areas or indigenous knowledge relative to scientific knowledge22. To prevent such situations, it is crucial to establish an open forum for dialog that bridges disparate perspectives and knowledge across scales, fostering co-management based on power and responsibility sharing21. This represents an important challenge for the practical application of the weather commons framework.

Future challenges

Our proposed weather commons framework is both a contribution to the renewed debate on weather modification and an invitation to open discussion and collaboration. Much further theoretical and applied research is needed to bridge the implantation of these technologies with their governance across scales. How might Ostrom’s design principles be adapted to a weather commons framework necessarily spanning sectoral and spatial boundaries20? How can new weather modification technologies be critically examined and positioned within the framework and thereby, within the boundaries of local democratic governance? As technological development for weather modification advances, so must our capacity for commoning the weather—an endeavor likely to span a wide range of fields beyond modern meteorology engineering, including culture, history, art, and religion23.