Mr Walker, the chief executive of the Texas-based aviation company SOAR, carries out an increasingly popular – and in some cases, controversial – effort to chemically impregnate clouds to increase rainfall.
Drought has over the past decade wrought economic havoc from the United States to China and beyond, and impacted food prices worldwide.
In the case of Malawi, it showed that a 50 per cent reduction in the effect of drought led to a 20 per cent higher per capita GDP at the end of the simulation.
The extreme US great grain belt drought of 2012, meanwhile, pushed up world food prices, exerting pressure on the cost of living and affecting food security, UNFAO says.
In the UAE, officials at the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) say cloud seeding efforts here are working.
In 2015, the centre began offering US$5 million in grant money via its Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science to researchers working on water security challenges.
Prof Harrison’s project, Electrical aspects of rain generation, is based on the natural occurrence of electrical charges and their potential to modify water droplets even when clouds are not charged to the extent that leads to thunderstorms.
Nobody can make clouds,” says Roelof Bruintjes, a senior scientist who works on weather modification for the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The WMO is carrying out a global review of knowledge on cloud seeding, with the aim of preparing official advice and a comprehensive database of projects as the number of countries seeking to invest in the technology rises, Mr Terblanche says.