Beijing aims to control weather at Olympics

Dr. Andy Detwiler, a professor of meteorology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology who edits the Journal of Weather Modification, suggested the Olympic weather-harnassing effort may not meet with much more success.

“It’s the emperor and his new clothes sort of thing. Nobody wants to admit there is any uncertainty involved in the operation,” he said. “The only nations I know of who claim that they can schedule the weather — clear skies for public events, prevent rain at big celebrations — is the old Soviet Union and China.”

On the very day Chinese weather modification experts were boasting at a news conference about controlling rain during the Olympics, the country’s midsection was being pummeled by the worst snow storm in 50 years, which Chinese meteorologists failed to predict.

Several calls to the China Meteorological Administration seeking interviews with weather modification officials to discuss the Olympics plans were greeted with the same reply: “This is a sensitive topic.” One junior staff member at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau said the subject was very guarded, “like Americans keeping their nuclear secrets.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Wang Guanghe, deputy director of the Research Center for Weather Modification, acknowledged an absence of rigorous science in China’s vast cloud-seeding operation.

“We haven’t done any of these studies,” he said. “We have an indoor simulation model. We can use devices to observe the changes in the clouds ... but it’s really hard to have an authentic and convincing result.”

Better off conserving?
A recent study in Oklahoma and Texas uncovered little evidence that cloud seeding works. Like China, many American programs are run by local governments with little coordination from the nation’s capital.

“You just don’t see any consistent signal that these activities are producing any more rainfall than what normally would have occurred,” said Dr. Jeff Basara, director of research for the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. “You’re much better off conserving water than trying to make it rain.”

The most common way to seed clouds is blasting them with silver iodide, which is generally believed to be a safe chemical. Liquid nitrogen and dry ice can also be used.

Another worry: Beijing’s severe air pollution. Dr. Daniel Rosenfeld, a meteorologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has visited his Chinese colleagues, said there are early indications that pollution decreases rain, which may be driving Beijing and northern China further into drought.

The International Olympic Committee has already threatened to postpone some endurance events if Beijing’s air quality is poor. Beijing, a city of 17 million, is expected to ban 1.5 million vehicles from the roads, shut factories and foundries and halt the city’s frantic construction boom for the games.

“The only thing that cleans up the pollution is the rain, and if they are going to suppress rain, my worry is the pollution will be oppressive,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, who will use the Olympics to study the impact of reduced pollution. “It’s a Catch-22.”

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