China plans to halt rain for Olympics

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rain31jan31,0,39372.story


GLOOMY: People ride bikes on a damp day in Beijing last month. The real rainy season comes in summer, and Chinese meteorologists have trained for the Summer Olympics by practicing their “rain mitigation” techniques at recent special events. They’ve had several successes.
'Weather modification' team will manipulate the clouds in summer to try to keep the open-air stadium dry.
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 31, 2008
BEIJING -- It is yet another attempt by man to triumph over nature.

Determined not to let anything spoil their party, organizers of the 2008 Summer Olympics said Wednesday that they will take control over the most unpredictable element of all -- the weather.

While China's Olympic athletes are getting ready to compete on the fields, its meteorologists are working the skies, attempting the difficult feat of making sure it doesn't rain on the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies.

"Our team is trained. Our preparations are complete," declared Wang Jianjie, a spokeswoman from the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, addressing a news conference at the headquarters of the Beijing organizing committee.

The Chinese are among the world's leaders in what is called "weather modification," but they have more experience creating rain than preventing it. In fact, the techniques are virtually the same.

Cloud-seeding is a relatively well-known practice that involves shooting various substances into clouds, such as silver iodide, salts and dry ice, that bring on the formation of larger raindrops, triggering a downpour. But Chinese scientists believe they have perfected a technique that reduces the size of the raindrops, delaying the rain until the clouds move on.

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Training with the Olympics in mind, the meteorologists have been practicing their "rain mitigation" techniques since 2006. They have had a couple of dry runs, so to speak -- a China-Africa summit and a panda festival in Sichuan province, among others.

The Chinese have been tinkering with the weather since the late 1950s, trying to bring rains to the desert terrain of the northern provinces.

The bureau of weather modification was established in the 1980s and is now believed to be the largest in the world. It has a reserve army of 37,000 people -- most of them sort of weekend warriors who are called to duty during unusual droughts. The bureau has 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 antiaircraft guns, said Wang Guohe, director of weather modification for the Chinese Academy of Meteorology.

"We have the largest program in the world with the most people involved and the most equipment, but it is not really the most advanced," Wang said. That honor belongs to the Russians, who he says used sophisticated cloud-seeding in 1986 to prevent radioactive rain from the Chernobyl reactor accident from reaching Moscow.

[SidDithers]

1. Well...good luck with that...nt

Sid

[seemslikeadream]

2. They’ve had several successes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rain31jan31,0,39372.story

You could at least read the article before commenting

[SidDithers]

3. Um, I did...

The article is remarkably short on detail as to when and where these successes occurred.

Perhaps you can provide more information.

Sid

[seemslikeadream]

4. Oh Sid you make me work so hard

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IG13Ad01.html

The farmers are part of the biggest rain-making force in the world: China's Weather Modification Program.

According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country.

"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million.

It is no coincidence that the world's biggest such project is in China. The country's leadership has never been cautious about harnessing nature, taking on a slew of what were once thought impossible engineering challenges, such as the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's longest highland railroad.

For a largely agrarian country like China, the weather was thought of as far too important to be left to the whim of gods or nature. As a result, Chinese scientists began researching man-made rain as far back as 1958, using chemicals such as silver iodide or dry ice to facilitate condensation in moisture-laden clouds.

In the beginning, the idea was to ease drought and improve harvests for Chinese farmers, but over the decades other functions have evolved such as firefighting, prevention of hailstorms, and replenishment of river heads and reservoirs. Artificial rain has also been used by some provinces to combat drought and sandstorms. In 2004, Shanghai decided to induce rain simply to lower the temperature during a prolonged heat wave to bring relief to an increasingly hot and sweaty urban populace.

[SidDithers]

5. Ah nevermind. It's not worth it...

Bookmarking this thread to check how it's working out in August.

Sid

[SidDithers]

6. Kicking, so we can all evaluate the "rain halting" claim...

Beijing weather forecast for the next 6 days:

Thursday...rain
Friday...sun
Saturday...rain
Sunday...rain
Monday...rain
Tuesday...rain

http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/54511.html

Sid

[Bolo Boffin]

7. Friday, success! nt