io9
The top of China's "bird's nest" Olympic stadium is open to the elements, and therefore the government has ordered the Beijing Meteorological Bureau to make sure it won't rain during the games. The Bureau has already had some success preventing light rain, but heavy rain is harder to control. They'll use two different "seeding" techniques for dissipating droplets in frozen clouds, and dissipating warmer clouds before they start forming water droplets. Beijing's head of weather manipulation, Zhang Qian, explains how.
She said:
For cold clouds below zero degrees, 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 'will stop the rain' [News.com via Slashdot]
Comments
I'm surprised China isn't taking its normal route and just imprisoning and executing the offending clouds.
I wonder if Herzog & de Meuron had this level of geoengineering in mind when designing their nest
'Ordered'? And if they can't quite manage this little feat, what happens? Off with their heads!
@7Zark7 Iz In Ur Internetz: or rolling over them with tanks
Worst olympics ever. Are they going to roll out the execution vans?
This should work as well as all of the truly high quality products they make for Wal-Mart!
do they do birthday parties?
they seed with lead?
didnt like 100 people die the last time someone tried to control the weather.
@fostina1: I don't recall anyone dying when Marshall, Will and Holly tried it.
thought it caused a major flood or something.
No, see, what you do is just point guns at everyone, and tell them to pretend it's sunny.
Actually, from what I hear the smog clouds are going to be a bigger problem than the rain clouds. Cool buildings, though.
-Kle.
@7Zark7 Iz In Ur Internetz: and then turning them into an art/science exhibit.
They have some really innovative buildings going up in Bejing, but I'm not sure I love the looks of this frame-work. But it does glow handsomely, like a huge, atomic-powered brain. I'm sure the'll shake the bugs out of their culture. We're still trying and we've had more practice at democracy than China has ever had.
And this is why the Weather Wizard was an idiot. There's a market for controlling the weather, why would you create something that could do that and then use it illegally?
Rain, rain, go away; come back another day...
Uhhh... rain prevention technology has been around since what, the 50s? 60s? There's a reason it was clear and sunny for most Mayday parades in the ol' Soviet Union.
I believe Putin had the sky seeded for St. Petersburg's tricentennial, and that garnered the same "wow, we can do that?" response.
We seed clouds all the time. There is a theory that seeding clouds before they have a chance to really gather, can or could pervent hurricanes. Or make them into the kind of storms that weathermen get hard for.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?