Beijing had their earliest snow in over a decade, with up to 20 inches bringing down many trees still covered with leaves. But does it count? It wasn't entirely natural. With strong winds from the north holding temperatures at 29F (-2C), it looked like snow, and had to be shoveled or bulldozed. But the real story was how it happened. When they say the state controls everything, they really mean it. China controls the weather too. While in the grip of a severe drought, The Beijing Weather Modification Bureau seeded the clouds with 500 cigarette sized sticks of silver iodide from 28 rocket launch sites around the city, to induce precipitation. It had not rained in 100 days over the city, but on the down side 12 area highways were closed.
This is part of The Beijing Meteorological Bureau, and is believed to be the world's largest effort to control the weather. It employs 37,000 people, and has a history of trying to end hailstorms or make rain to end droughts. Most recently, the tried to keep the 2008 Olympics rain free by seeding clouds headed towards the city and forcing them to drop their rain before arriving at Beijing.
The Beijing Weather Modification Bureau has had modest success, but what do you think? I'd love to give teachers and kids a snow day, but artificially altering the weather changes the natural order of things. Releasing energy in the form of rain or snow, before the atmosphere is ready, could have implications down the road. This follows the chaos theory how small changes in one area can have big results somewhere else. So, if a Butterfly flaps it's wings in Beijing, and then it rains in New York, then what happens when China makes it snow? Oh, that's right, the New York Yankees win the World Series. See, everything is connected. At least you now know who to blame.
Chinese meteorologists have brought about Beijing’s earliest snowfall in a decade, after seeding rain clouds with silver iodide to ease a drought.
The Weather Modification Office had sprayed clouds with 186 doses of the chemical to bring rain for the wheat crop, the Beijing Evening News said.
But the arrival of a cold front caused heavy snow to fall, disrupting road, rail and air travel.
Cloud seeding is often used in China to bring on rain.
The country’s north is prone to droughts, while the south is often flooded.
In Anhui province, which has been having a drought since September, there was 4cm (1.5in) of rainfall at the weekend.
Much of the country’s farming still relies on rainfall as many of its communities have a poor irrigation system.
In February, the authorities created artificial snowfalls over Beijing in an attempt to alleviate the dry conditions.
In addition to cloud seeding, the government is building a huge network of tunnels and waterways that will funnel water from the south to the north, but the project is still five years from completion.
Cloud seeding, a weather modification technique that induces precipitation, might be the key to keeping the Earth’s temperature in balance, scientists say.
Beijing residents awoke last week to the earliest snow in the city in 21 years thanks to cloud seeding by the city’s Weather Modification Office, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Drought has gripped northern China particularly hard, causing government officials to implement technological solutions.
“We have to seize every opportunity to increase precipitation,” the head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, Zhang Qiang, told the Global Times last week. “Beijing had almost no rainfall in October.”
Officials in Beijing used cloud seeding before the 2008 Summer Olympics to ensure a dry opening ceremony.
Cloud seeding induces rain by scattering aerosol particles in the clouds. Silver iodide, the most common particulate used, is shot by a ground rocket or by a flare from a plane into a cloud to provide a nucleus for water vapor to cling to. Rain happens when these particles coalesce into a droplet heavy enough to fall.
Clouds need to be present before they can be seeded, said Roelof Bruintjes, a weather modification expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“The probability of creating rain depends on the technique and the water vapor content of the clouds. Efficient clouds release 80 percent of their mass as rain. Inefficient clouds release only 20 percent. It is easier to enhance precipitation from inefficient clouds,” Bruintjes said.
Though cloud seeding is widely used, it has caused disputes in some areas of China. Authorities in the Henan province used cloud seeding to alleviate drought in 2004. When more rain fell over the western region than the eastern, meteorological officials from eastern cities accused their counterparts of intercepting ‘their’ rain, the BBC reported.
Some scientists say the technique can be used for more than rain production.
John Latham, Senior Research Associate at National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Stephen Salter, Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh, advocate seeding to create great cloud mirrors above the earth’s oceans, which could regulate global temperatures until non-carbon-based energy sources are widely available.
Their plan is to use wind-powered ocean vessels to spray seawater into low-level clouds to increase their albedo, or reflectivity. Clouds with a higher concentration of water particles could send more incoming sunlight back to space before it touches and heats the earth.
“Cloud seeding is not a solution to fossil fuel use,” Latham said. “A global cooling scheme does not address ocean acidification, for example. But it can provide breathing space to hold the global ice cover and temperature in balance in the short term.”
The scientists are also researching how their scheme might impact land rainfall and wind patterns, which are strongly affected by ocean conditions.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Fact is that this scientific “mission” has crossed the line! The cold they produced is not presumable at all. They produce too much cold, beyond what they planned. Till now they are waiting warmer days… in the winter.
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