Chinese boom in industry and population growth in recent decades has put pressure on natural resources and the environment. To provide food and increase the yield of the crops for the growing population, the Government intends to begin to control the climate and weather through the five regional programs to artificially raise the amount of rainfall by 10% by 2015. The program, which is included in the recently published 12th five-year plan (2011-2015), says that it will artificially raise the amount of rainfall by 230 billion cubic meters a year. To make matters more interesting, in the northeastern province of Jilin, the amount of rainfall was already increased by about 50 billion cubic meters by using this program.
According to the Chinese Meteorological Administration report, each year an average of 106 trillion cubic feet of water passes through China in the clouds, while only 20% fall to the ground. Although extreme weather events like droughts and floods destroy crops, protection and provision of adequate irrigation in agricultural areas of the nation is now a government priority. In addition, China has set itself a second goal - to increase its annual grain yield for 550 million tons by 2020. According to some reports China exceeded this goal this year with a record 571 million tons, which they would manage to do with control of the weather.
"Because clouds are boundless, control of weather must not have limits. Five regional programs of weather control will be coordinated from the ground, with programs such as "clouds seeding" by rockets and aircrafts, in order to increase the potential for the occurrence of rain and snow," - said Zheng Jiangping, deputy director of the CMA’s department of emergency response, disaster mitigation and public services emergency management to state-run newspaper "China Daily".
Using the techniques of so-called "cloud seeding" is not new in China. The method of creating artificial rainfall involves injecting silver iodide particles into the atmosphere which would stimulate the precipitation. In the past, "seeding" the clouds helped to regulate and reduce pollution in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics, but in other cases led to serious disasters. In 2009, cloud seeding was "marked" as a main cause of the massive blizzard, the worst in last 50 years, in the normally dry north. "Seeding" has created an additional 16 million metric tons of snow, which led to the death of more than 40 people and an estimated damage of 650 million dollars.
source: inhabitat.com, image source: flickr user - storyvillegirl
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