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    A wheat farmer in China is worried his crop will fail due to lack of rain. Rockets are fired into clouds carrying silver iodide, which causes ice particles to form and fall as rain, saving the farmer's wheat. While some experts question if cloud seeding is effective, research projects indicate it can increase rainfall, though more studies are still needed.

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    A wheat farmer in China is worried his crop will fail due to lack of rain. Rockets are fired into clouds carrying silver iodide, which causes ice particles to form and fall as rain, saving the farmer's wheat. While some experts question if cloud seeding is effective, research projects indicate it can increase rainfall, though more studies are still needed.

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    A wheat farmer in China is worried his crop will fail due to lack of rain. Rockets are fired into clouds carrying silver iodide, which causes ice particles to form and fall as rain, saving the farmer's wheat. While some experts question if cloud seeding is effective, research projects indicate it can increase rainfall, though more studies are still needed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    21 views1 page

    111

    Uploaded by

    hunghung930101
    A wheat farmer in China is worried his crop will fail due to lack of rain. Rockets are fired into clouds carrying silver iodide, which causes ice particles to form and fall as rain, saving the farmer's wheat. While some experts question if cloud seeding is effective, research projects indicate it can increase rainfall, though more studies are still needed.

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    A Wheat farmer Gang Liu is a worried man.

    The annual rains have not arrived, and


    there is a danger that unless there is substantial rainfall soon, his annual wheat crop will
    fail. As he looks anxiously at the clouds which promise rain but are failing to deliver it,
    there is a sudden loud roar, and from fields for miles around, hundreds of small rockets
    are fired into the clouds. Within twenty minutes, the farms around the eastern Chinese
    city of Luohe are experiencing their first rain for many weeks. Gang Liu's valuable wheat
    has been saved, thanks to a technique known as 'cloud seeding', in which the chemical
    silver iodide (Agl) is introduced into clouds. This causes the tiny drops of moisture in
    the clouds to turn to ice. These tiny ice particles join until they become heavy enough
    to fall from the sky, turning into rain as they melt.
    B But did cloud seeding really cause the rain in Luohe to fall, or was it just a
    coincidence? Experts often question whether cloud seeding actually works. It is hard to
    tell how effective cloud seeding actually is, they say, as it might have rained anyway,
    without human intervention. But this has not stopped many governments and
    organisations from trying. There are currently 150 weather-modifying projects taking
    place in more than 40 countries. Not all of them are aimed at creating rain. The
    Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation in the USA, for example, is experimenting
    with firing microwaves into clouds to prevent the tornadoes which cause enormous
    damage to the country every year. In Russia, experiments have been carried out to
    make sure the sun shines during important national events.
    C However, it is rainmaking that dominates the research programmes. In many of
    these, researchers are using trials in which some clouds are 'seeded' while others are
    not, and both groups are monitored. Arlen Huggins of the Desert Research Institute is
    leading a research project in Australia. Weather-monitoring technology is so good
    nowadays, he says, that we can measure clouds much more effectively, even from the
    inside. As a result, we now know much more about the effect humans can have on the
    weather. What Huggins' team has discovered so far is promising. They believe that
    cloud seeding does work, although there are still two years of the six-year project left
    to go.
    D In China, where the majority of cloud-seeding operations take place, weather-
    modification authorities use army rockets to fire silver-iodide particles into the clouds.
    39,000 staff working for the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) are e

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