DESIGNING THE WEATHER

Posted by Mike Rigby

The unseasonal snow that fell on Beijing for 11 hours a few Sundays ago was the earliest and heaviest there has been for years. It was also, China claims, man-made.

By the end of last month, farmland in the already dry north of China was suffering badly due to drought. So China’s meteorologists fired 186 explosive rockets loaded with chemicals to “seed” clouds and encourage snow to fall.

Officials said the blue skies that brightened Beijing’s parade to celebrate 60 years of communism last month were a result of the 18 cloud-seeding jets and 432 explosive rockets scrambled to empty the sky of rain beforehand. Last year, more than 1,000 rockets were fired to ensure a dry night for last year’s Olympic opening ceremony. Putting an entirely new spin on the notion of climate change.

Paraphrased from an article in G2

Posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm by Mike Rigby. Filed under MISC. Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.