Slashdot Mirror
China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics
BRock97 writes: "An article in the August 5th issue of Newsweek describes the steps the Chinese are taking to ensure a perfect forecast for the 2008 Olympics. This includes shutting down factories that are pumping pollution into the atmosphere to increasing the number of trees planted to reduce dust and erosion (need to spread these kind of ideas world wide!). The interesting aspect, though, is all the research and development into using rockets and furnaces to modify the atmosphere and create the weather that would be optimal for the games. By heating the air or dumping cloud condensation nuclei into the atmosphere, various types of weather can be achieved. Seems that they have had success as far back as 1987, creating rain to help put out a raging forest fire. Cool stuff from a weather nerd standpoint."
Gee whiz. Fly off the handle much?
If you read the article you'd know that they're talking about induced rain. That's all. You know there's going to be a soccer match in three days (or whatever), so you put silver iodide in the clouds to make it rain. Get much of the moisture out of the local atmosphere, reduce the likelihood of rain next week. It's a very localized and very well understood process. The hitch, of course, is getting the right amount of stuff into the atmosphere at the right time and in the right way. It's all in the delivery.
Besides, the article is worth it for the headline alone: "Rain called on account of game." LOL.