The HAARP research facility is being used to create a particular type of cloud.
HAARP does not produce water in the atmosphere or interact with existing clouds so cannot have created the clouds pictured, which although distinctive, have been photographed many times before.
A post on Facebook features images of distinctive clouds with the caption: “Someone is playing the HA(A)RP above my head right at this moment”.
This appears to be implying that HAARP, which stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a research facility for the study of parts of the Earth’s upper atmosphere located in Alaska, is responsible for the clouds in the image.
But HAARP cannot control the weather or interact with clouds.
According to the facility: “Radio waves in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere—the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth’s weather. Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather.”
The associate director at Boston College’s Institute for Scientific Research, Keith Groves, previously told USA Today: “There is no credible mechanism by which HAARP can modify the weather or the neutral atmosphere in any detectable way”.
He added: “Claims of this type are completely unfounded. They are sensational, but neither serious nor scientific.”
HAARP also says the facility “doesn’t produce water in the atmosphere, has no capability to release gases or liquids, and does not interact with existing water in clouds.”
Clouds similar to the ones pictured have been photographed many times before.
Even the highest clouds don’t reach the altitudes of the thermosphere or ionosphere, which HAARP exists to study.
We’ve written about the HAARP facility before and how it isn’t responsible for peculiar clouds. Other false claims include that HAARP created natural disasters after being “tested on” specific countries, and that it was responsible for recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. People have been making similarly false claims for over a decade.
Image courtesy of W.carter
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because HAARP did not create the clouds in the images.
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