Chinese make Olympic weather bow to Party's will
Rain-prevention experiments 'satisfactory', claims Beijing
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
Chinese officials have announced that the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has successfully carried out experiments aimed at preventing light rain from washing out the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics on 8 August.
The problem for the games' organisers is that the showpiece Bird's Nest stadium which will host the gala is an open-air affair, Reuters explains. Accordingly, the bureau was tasked with tackling the precipitation issue. The bureau's splendidly-titled "head of weather manipulation", Zhang Qian, told a press conference: "Our experiments with rain mitigation have been aimed at light rain. With heavy rain it is more difficult.* The results with light rain have been satisfactory."
She elaborated: "For cold clouds below zero degrees (Celcius), we use a coolant made from liquid nitrogen to increase the number of droplets while decreasing their mean size. As a result, the smaller droplets are less likely to fall and precipitation can be reduced.
"For clouds above zero degrees we use the seeding agent silver iodide to accelerate the droplets' collision and coalescence, producing a downdraft which suppresses the formation of clouds."
China may also use tried-and-trusted cloud-seeding methods to induce the rain to fall before it reaches the stadium, according to Wang Yubin, deputy chief engineer at the bureau. It's also hard at work gearing up for the pre-games ascent of the Olympic torch to the peak of Mount Everest, and Wang assured: "We will have very detailed forecasts. We will be able to tell the organizers: the winds are too strong, you cannot do it on this day, or, you can do it on this day." ®
Bootnote
*Yes, we know. A nice way of saying "if it chucks it down, you're going to take a soaking, matey".
COMMENTS
@Anonymous Coward
"If weather control is this easy, why aren't we manipulating it to fix the current climate?"
Because weather control != climate control.
@ Charles Manning
The only problem is the Chinese have been experimenting with weather manipulation for several years ahead of the Olympics - in order to ensure perfect weather for the event, validate methods, estimate costs, etc...
sod that, just have a bbq in the UK
If everyone in the UK decides to have a bbq on the day of the opening ceremony then they will dodge the rain.
It will fall here instead
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
