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    Weather project aims to moisten dry land
    (China Daily by Liang Chao)
    Updated: 2004-02-28 00:45

    Facing persistent drought, the worst natural calamity for China's economy and ecosystem, the country is set to launch extensive weather modification operations to seek extra precipitation from water-droplet clouds.

    "Large-scale weather modification operations, mostly cloud seeding and hail suppression using airplanes, aircraft guns and special rocket launchers, will be widely adopted to enhance precipitation in upstream areas of large reservoirs and cradles of major rivers," a leading weather official announced Friday.

    "Cloud seeding or artificial rain-making, hail and fog-dispersing techniques will also be used to help improve ecosystem and control forest fires, secure freeway transportation and success of key social events like the Beijing 2008 Olympic games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo," Qin Dahe, the top official at the China Meteorological Administration, said Friday during a national conference in Beijing aimed at co-ordinating such operation.

    "The scope of China's weather modification is ranked as the first of its type in the world today with strong government financial backing," Qin said.

    Last year, 413 million yuan (US$49 million) was injected into the operation.

    In 2003 alone, more than 3,800 rocket launchers, about 7,000 antiaircraft guns and many airplanes were put into use for various weather modification operations to enhance precipitation in more than 1,800 counties throughout China. More than 35,000 people were involved.

    Qin made it clear that, "in the years ahead, such operations will enable China to exploit more water resources from the sky to combat drought."

    This was viewed by experts that attended the conference as "an important turning point" for the drought-relief and ecosystem improvement plan.

    China's per capita water resources share is only about one-quarter of the world average.

    The situation has been worsened by extensive drought.

    "The country's annual shortage of water is up to 40 billion cubic metres today. Drought has, since 1990, hit about 27 million hectares of farmland or 20 per cent of the total each year, cut down grain output by 24 million tons or 4.7 of the country's total," according to E Jingping, vice-minister of water resources.

    To mitigate the losses, a total of 4,231 artificial rain-making operations used airborne silver-iodide flame seeding devices to enhance precipitation in areas up to 3 million square kilometres between 1995 and 2003.

    Cloud seeding over large areas was also done with thousands of antiaircraft guns and rockets that fired shells filled with catalysts like dry ice.

    Such operations can enhance precipitation up to 24 per cent, according Mao Jietai, a leading expert working on national co-ordination of cloud seeding operations.

    Such operations have led to 210 billion cubic metres of precipitation in many arid areas across China during the 1995-2003 period.

    To date, hail dispersals using antiaircraft guns and rockets have been successfully introduced into China's 23 provinces and municipalities to help 410,000 square kilometres of drought-stricken area.

    Over the past nine years, it was estimated that more than 34 billion yuan (US$4 billion) worth of potential hail damage was prevented by such operations.

    Total funds earmarked by the central and local governments for such operation have amounted to 2.2 billion yuan (US$265 million) during the period.

     
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