China Embraces Technology to Produce Rain on Demand
Weather modification sounds like a term out of a sensationalistic movie, doesn’t it? Yet, it’s something that occurs almost every day in the massive country of China. Modifying weather has become a way of life for many Chinese scientists and it’s not something that regularly falls under the radar of most Americans.
Manipulating weather, however, has become big business in China. When and how much rain falls in China now depend on the presence of thousands of machines across the nation.
State-Run Concerns are Behind the Move
According to Chinese media, Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation of China has placed these rainmaking machines on the Himalayan Tibetan Plateau. Taken together, these machines have the ability to seed the sky to produce a 5-kilometer storm cloud on demand. The array is expected to irrigate 1.6 million square kilometers annually and alleviate drought in some of the most badly affected areas.
The Technology is Not New
The technology, in fact, was already available by the time of the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008. China admits it manipulated weather over the capital city immediately before and during the two-week summer games in an effort to help ensure a rain-free event. In the ensuing years, the project has grown in scale to include increasing China’ freshwater resources or its billions of people.
Where the Machines are Located
China’s Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has installed thousands of rain-inducing machines across the Tibetan plateau in an effort to increase rain in the region. The plateau is where much of China’s water originates, running down from the highlands via the Mekong, Yellow and Yangtze rivers, which have their origins on the plateau. The effort has grown in recent years as part of the Sky River Project, which is intended to increase the water resources for China’s billions of people.
Hope for Drought-Stricken Areas
Although the jury is still out on how well this technology works, it’s providing hope to those countries where safe drinking and irrigation water is scarce. Large, adverse weather events across the globe frequently result in extensive dry spells or severe storms and flooding. Water modification techniques that can be used to benefit local peoples while protecting vulnerable areas from the brunt of such weather, can not only bring safe drinking water to a region but also help environmentalists learn to communicate and understand just how extensive the problem that lack of safe drinking water is.
China intends to create more than 60 billion cubic meters of rain every year through this method by 2020 to help combat the lack of clean drinking water. In 2017, the Russian government placed $1.3 million in funds to help a project design to stop rain from falling on International Worker Day. The ability to stop or start precipitation shos that that humans have the potential to easily help crisis involving lack of clean drinking water in third world nations across the world.
