A research team claims to have found evidence that China has successfully modified its climate on at least one occasion.
The document, written by researchers fromTsinghua Chinese University, denounces the fact that the Chinese authorities have succeeded in altering the climate through cloud seeding technology.
It certainly happened this year, the report says, in Beijing for the celebration of the centenary of the Communist Party (CCP). Thousands of participants in the celebration found clear skies and less pollution: a kind of "blessing from heaven", but of anything but divine origin.
Altering the climate in China, a success story
Cloud seeding technology involves shooting silver iodide particles into clouds, causing water droplets to clump together and substantially change the climate on a local scale.
It is not the country's first attempt at this technology, but it appears to be the most successful and largest-scale example to date in the world. A result that adds credibility to government reports according to which the China will expand its climate-altering program to nearly 9 million square kilometers (5,5 million square miles) by 2025. That's an area larger than the whole of India.
Clues and evidence
The researchers' paper sharpened the evidence that the change actually occurred. The team attached to the document not only eyewitness accounts of rockets being launched into the sky from the mountains just outside the capital, but also the discovery of rocket debris after the event on July 1st.
Pollution in Beijing in the days leading up to the celebration was particularly bad. Yet the pollution index in the area went from "moderate" to "good" on the day of the event, complete with providential rain in the middle of the day. The success of the climate-altering operation could lead to questions and concerns about the broader use of such technology, especially in the military.
In fact, several researchers are very skeptical about the long-term effects of cloud seeding. Currently (especially in the Arabian Peninsula) it has only proved effective in the short term to mitigate drought. Furthermore, altering the climate of an entire country is an unknown factor also for the effects on neighboring countries: if making it rain effectively on one's territory worsens the drought in the neighboring one, the diplomatic crisis is on the horizon.
