Slashdot Mirror
China Claims Score In Weather Manipulation
hackingbear writes "Despite prior skepticism over effectiveness, China claims successful application of weather intervention to ensure a stunning Olympic opening ceremony, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency:
'We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4 p.m. and 11:39 p.m. on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,' said Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau (BMB).
While there wasn't a single drop of rain over the National Stadium — also known as the Bird's Nest — during the opening ceremony from 8:00pm-12:00am on August 8, the weather services said that Baoding City of Hebei Province, to the southwest of Beijing, received the biggest rainfall of 100 millimeters Friday night, and Beijing's Fangshan District recorded a rainfall of 25 millimeters."
Not only is the weather being controlled but so are the people. For the first time ever the Olympic road cycling course was deserted. The silence freaked out quite a few of the riders, who are used to Tour de France conditions, where the spectators go berserk.
I'll believe it when they can A) stop rain on demand, or B) start rain on demand.
A) They did stop rain on demand.
B) There is quite a difference between dispersing clouds that are already there and creating clouds out of nothing.
And any system that be able to effectively deliver water on demand would probably be far more expensive than digging a ditch and letting water flow through it.
Unless you are thinking of something like this at 5:00.
That might work... with some changes to the laws of physics.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
We've been doing cloud seeding since the 60's or so here in Australia. It works under a fairly specific set of circumstances. You need clouds that are 'bursting at the seams' and are going to drop their rain at some point in the very near future. Given such clouds, you drop silver iodide into them and you'll increase the chance of the rain event happening now rather than a bit later, and probably increase the volume of rain too.
You'll never get rain out of air that just doesn't have enough moisture in it to begin with though.
And you can't stop it raining somewhere, except by coaxing the clouds into making their rain somewhere else first, which is what I think China did (or what I think China think they did :)
This guy supposedly did it a century ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hatfield
Supposedly Hatfield noticed that it would frequently rain on battlefields somewhat after the fighting had died down. Extrapolating from this, he considered that perhaps something in the explosions was affecting clouds overhead.
Unfortunately, his chemical formula died with him, but it's an inspiring story if he really did come up with this idea himself and actually put into practice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
We have the same in Cairo in November from the rice-straw fires in the delta. The air is just black/gray in the morning and hangs. It is probably the reason for something that they expats collectively refer to as Cairo Lung.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
The weather and air quality have been fairly close to the worrisome scenario painted months ago. I've been checking meteorological observations every day, finding the dew point at Beijing's airport in the mid and upper 70s on a regular basis and visibility of 1-2 miles common (It is currently under 1 mile, but there is rain falling).
Back in February I wrote on my blog of the potential Olympic weather: "So, when the deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau says, "Even if the rare extreme weather hits Beijing in August, people will not feel muggy. High humidity will not accompany the hot weather in August because their climax periods are different, " I'd hide the silverware and other valuables."
Current Beijing observations are here.
Dew points (the real number you should look at when you think humidity) have been consistently in the 70s--often the upper 70s. That's like walking around with a warm, damp cloth wrapped around your body. Much of yesterday had Beijing more humid than Miami.
I would feel better about what the Chinese say if dissenting voices were allowed to speak about the air!
There is an independent group from Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in England who have been monitoring the air and issuing their own forecasts which have been much more pessimistic than the official government version. Now that forecast is gone! From Telegraph.co.uk: British scientists monitoring air quality in Beijing have been ordered to close down their website after their readings clashed with official statistics showing the city was meeting its pollution targets.