China, in Search of Water, is Building a Rain-Making Network Three Times the Size of Spain (scmp.com)

China is testing cutting-edge defence technology to develop a powerful yet relatively low-cost weather modification system to bring substantially more rain to the Tibetan plateau, Asia's biggest freshwater reserve. From a report: The system, which involves an enormous network of fuel-burning chambers installed high up on the Tibetan mountains, could increase rainfall in the region by up to 10 billion cubic metres a year -- about 7 per cent of China's total water consumption -- according to researchers involved in the project. Tens of thousands of chambers will be built at selected locations across the Tibetan plateau to produce rainfall over a total area of about 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 square miles), or three times the size of Spain. It will be the world's biggest such project.

The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide, a cloud-seeding agent with a crystalline structure much like ice. The chambers stand on steep mountain ridges facing the moist monsoon from south Asia. As wind hits the mountain, it produces an upward draft and sweeps the particles into the clouds to induce rain and snow.

Comments

You need moisture first

[bluefoxlucid]

This won't increase total precipitation. Either the moisture is moving and raining somewhere which doesn't run to the water table attached to the reservoir, or all of this water is already coming down as rain. Are they stealing rain from another province over?

Re:You need moisture first

[gerald.edward.butler]

Yeah, they'll use up all the water before it rains over the pacific ocean. Oh, noes, the Pacific Ocean will dry up! AAaaaaaaa!

Re:You need moisture first

[bluefoxlucid]

This seems to be in the center of a continent, and affecting water-laden air moving northward. It looks like there's 850-1,850 miles of land before this air would reach Taiwan and the East Chinese Sea. The US is 3,000 miles across.

It looks like they could impact Gansu or Mongolia.

Re:You need moisture first

[RandomFactor]

This particular question is addressed at the very end of TFA. Sounds like there is a real concern with reducing the rainfall of other regions of China.

Reducing the rainfall in regions other than China is not mentioned as a consideration.

Beijing might not give the green light for the project either, he added, as intercepting the moisture in the skies over Tibet could have a knock-on effect and reduce rainfall in other Chinese regions.

Re:You need moisture first

[vtcodger]

It's entirely possible that these airmasses aren't going to rain or snow anywhere after passing over the Tibetan Plateau. Getting up to the level of the plateau -- 14000 feet and up -- involves a lot of orographic uplift and squeezing out of moisture. Once they move on to lower elevation areas, they will drop and warm. The resulting humidity may well be too low to support precipitation.

The article, if you actually read the whole thing, acknowledges that there may not be a lot of moisture there to extract even in Tibet. It also makes it clear that this is only a proposal and has not been approved by Beijing.

A Zero-Sum Game?

[VirginMary]

I wonder who may loose out on the rain then? Also, I bet, China won't give a rat's ass as long as they have the stronger military and with annual growth of military spending in the double digits the rest of the world should better look out.

Re:A Zero-Sum Game?

[Adolf Hitler, Jr.]

Was it really necessary to make me spray coffee all over my screen this early in the morning?

Ewwww, who keeps coffee in a spray bottle?

how this research breakthrough came to be

[nimbius]

professor higgins: "the rain in spain stays mainly in the plain"
chinese scientists: ...hold my oolong...

Re:how this research breakthrough came to be

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The rain in China goes mostly on my...oh my.

Re:Soil bacteria

[K. S. Kyosuke]

This is China you're talking about. You shoot first, ask environmental questions later.

What could possibly go wrong?

[argStyopa]

I'm no climatologist, but China mass-draining the monsoons of suspended water can't have anything but nearly catastrophic effects on down-wind ecosystems that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to exist compatibly with current moisture patterns.

If they pull the moisture out of the air to get it to fall in Tibet, then it won't be there to fall wherever those air currents normally dump it - Eastern Russia, Northern China, or maybe even Japan. It would seem that relatively-dessicated air masses may behave unpredictably as well.

Desalinization plant

[pablo_max]

Seems a bit more practical to build some desalinization plants. From what I have understood, recent advancements in membrane tech would make it far cheaper than in the past. Plus, there is the added benefit of lithium production.

https://www.ft.com/content/107...

Re:Soil bacteria

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They're definitely learning. The question is how quickly and how evenly is the experience applied. E.g., coal is probably not popular right now, but I guess the main reason is the air in large cities. How the "less visible" environmental issues are perceived right now in China, I have no idea.

The question you should always ask,

[rickb928]

about China's intentions when they 'develop' anything in the hinterlands, is how this will assist them in destroying or diminishing the indigenous, non-Chinese, population.

Especially in Tibet.