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China wants to make it rain.
If government officials in the world’s fourth-largest country have their way, a man-made weather-control machine will produce up to 10 million cubic meters of rain across the Tibetan Plateau — an area roughly the size of Alaska.
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As an extension of the </span><a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2018599/how-chinese-scientists-hope-control-weather-nourish"><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Sky River” project</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> developed in 2016 by scientists at China’s Tsinghua University, the Chinese state-owned Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has developed rain-inducing machines that disperse tiny silver iodide particles into the atmosphere. </span></p><p><div id="action_button_container"></div>
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</script></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The particles then act as nucleation centers for condensed water — in other words, allow the water molecules to stick together and eventually form a cloud that will become heavy enough to rain. In natural weather systems, it’s typically particles of dust that allow condensation to nucleate.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There’s no question the system works — the government used it to absorb moisture in the sky and </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-sets-aside-millions-to-control-the-rain-2016-7"><span style="font-weight: 400;">produce precipitation</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, thereby ensuring a dry week for the event. If the experiment on the Tibetan Plateau is successful, the resulting rain could equal approximately 7 percent of China’s annual water consumption, mitigating the drought conditions that have plagued much of the world — </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/asia/china-drought.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">and especially China</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> — the past few years.</span></p><p><div data-conversation-spotlight=""></div></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“[So far,] more than 500 burners have been deployed on alpine slopes in Tibet, Xinjiang and other areas for experimental use. The data we have collected show very promising results,” a researcher</span> <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/china-makes-it-rain-weather-control-network-twice-size-texas-922050"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">South China Morning Post</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Tibetan Plateau is the source of most of China’s water; each of the machines is expected to create a </span><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/05/10/china-is-launching-a-massive-weather-control-machine-the-size-of-alaska/#3dc497cd6315"><span style="font-weight: 400;">3-mile-long</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> string of rain clouds.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Although the U.S. and other countries — </span><a href="https://www.qt.com.au/news/china-will-control-its-weather-through-building-th/3414345/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">52 countries</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, to be exact — have tried similar artificial rain systems, it was on a much smaller scale.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The Chinese have been doing cloud seeding for a long time, but it’s only in the last 10 to 15 years that they’ve taken a scientific approach,” </span><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831771-300-china-is-building-a-huge-weather-control-machine-will-it-work/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Roelof Bruintjes, chair of the World Meteorological Office’s Expert Team on Weather Modification. “We are training some of their scientists and we’re trying to get them to be more quantitative.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some experts are concerned, however, about both the physical and political ramifications of controlling weather systems. For instance, moisture that </span><a href="https://www.qt.com.au/news/china-will-control-its-weather-through-building-th/3414345/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">would have eventually</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> produced clouds in nearby Pakistan, India and Nepal may no longer reach those areas, which could have a massive, unbalancing effect on the entire Asian continent.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Such weather modification does not 'produce' rain as such," geoengineer Janos Pasztor, from the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2), </span><a href="https://gizmodo.com/chinas-ambitious-new-rain-making-system-would-be-as-big-1825536740"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gizmodo. “Rather, it makes rain happen somewhere, which means that it will not happen somewhere else. This immediately means that ecosystems and people living somewhere else where it would have rained will no longer get this rain."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Others put the risks more plainly:</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“That is one massively powerful economic weapon,” Jim Dale, a consultant at meteorology firm British Weather Services, </span><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/china-makes-it-rain-weather-control-network-twice-size-texas-922050"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told</span></a> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Newsweek</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
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