Manmade snowfall drives Beijing to distraction
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A cyclist rides through Beijing following a snowstorm earlier this month. Heavy snowis rare in China's capital and almost unheard-of this early in the winter
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Beijingers are watching the sky apprehensively this weekend after an unexpected, artificially induced snowstorm last weekend caused havoc and led to an outraged response from citizens, who were given no warning.
More than 16 million tons of snow fell on the city, throwing the the power grid into tilt and delaying hundreds of flights at Beijing Capital International Airport. People are angry that the government seems to be able to control the weather – it cleared the clouds for the Olympics and made the sun shine for the 60th anniversary parade on 1 October – but is less smart about telling the population what's going on. The Beijing Weather Modification Office fired 186 capsules of silver iodide, the compound used in cloud seeding, into the clouds and hey presto – snow in November, a relative rarity in Beijing. It was the earliest first snow in the city for 22 years. The mean date for first snowfall over the past 50 years has been 29 November, according to the Beijing Meteorological Bureau.
An official from the Beijing Weather Modification Office said the boffins had "enhanced" the natural snowfall to ease drought conditions in the city. But more than 520 flights from Beijing were delayed, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded. "There is room to improve the weather manipulation warning system," a spokesman for the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) admitted.
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Comments
When one country can change local and regional weather patterns, even if only for a short period, the potential to influence economic conditions in neighboring nations is also present. Such a potential is likely to lead to social destabilization even without overt conflict.
Over the long term, this technology brings with it a type of ecological determinism in that the geographic location of a nation, relative to others, now has the potential to exert a new form of influence over future economic and social conditions. How we address this challenge will influence our future in ways that we cannot predict.