In response to the extraordinary drought that has hit parts of the country’s center in recent days, China has started to increase its use of artificial rain. Clouds may be induced to precipitate by injecting silver iodide from planes.
This nation is one of the most prolific users of the “cloud seeding” technology to produce artificial precipitation, and it has been in use for some time. Extreme dryness, coupled with encouraging outcomes from earlier years, seems to be motivating the use of artificial precipitation.
Using rockets that inject condensing elements like silver iodide into the clouds, the meteorological departments of the provinces of Hubei (center) and Hunan (center) are trying to speed up the rainy season.
At the very least, there are instances when prior experience was useful. The high heat and dryness that had afflicted a city in Hubei since midsummer were significantly relieved on August 17 thanks to plentiful and timely rainfall.
Cloud chasers in Xian’an County traveled almost 500 kilometers with rockets containing these substances in an attempt to induce these rains.
According to Yu Xiaoyao, chief of the Taoyuan county meteorological bureau, “it is not that simple to artificially boost the rain,” adding that the agency has been prepared to “launch the cannon” when the time comes since July 19. The official newspaper of Hunan province.
Clouds with a thickness of two to three kilometers are necessary for the finest artificial rain, Yu said. Because of this, timing was everything.
In late July, Taoyuan County started to experience high temperatures and minimal rain, with highs reaching 41 degrees Celsius. A total of 3.3 mm has fallen in the county during the last two weeks, a drop of 82.6 mm from the same period last year.
Drought across the whole Yangtze River Basin is “adversely impacting the drinking water safety of rural people and animals, and the development of crops,” the Ministry of Water Resources stated in a statement released on Wednesday.
Due to the growth in energy demand and production being unable to keep up with it, several companies in central China have ceased operations, and power shortages have been threatened in residential areas.
China’s decision to use artificial rain this summer is not an isolated incident but rather part of a larger strategy.
The Asian superpower has been working on a plan to alter the weather across at least 5.5 million square kilometers by 2025 since at least 2017. Essentially, silver iodide spray is applied to the sky to kill off the clouds.
One of the main goals is to prevent the damaging effects of hail on crops. The Chinese government said that at that time, they hoped to have achieved their goal of having “the area covered by hail protection activities reaches more than 580,000 square kilometers.”
The goal of the initiative is to aid in the management of extreme heat or drought, agricultural productivity, the response to forest and grassland fires, and disaster preparedness.
In fact, China has utilized the cloud seeding technology previously, most recently two summers ago, to clear the air for important events like Communist Party conclaves in Beijing. The city’s pollution level will drop as a result.
To further protect agricultural crops, an estimated 50,000 local governments regularly engage in cloud seeding in the hopes of stopping precipitation from falling before the onset of damaging hailstorms.
In four years, 60% of the country’s surface, according to official projections, will be able to regulate precipitation. As of now, we don’t know what effect this will have on the local climate or the weather.