In the festive celebrations for 100 years of the Communist Party of China, in July, the weather was good and the Beijing sky a little less gray-yellow than usual, a feature of air pollution in the Chinese capital.
So, on that day, July 1, 70.000 people enjoyed the big parade together with Xi Jinping and the Politburo.
According to research by Peking University, the Chinese authorities had intervened in nature to ensure that it would not rain in Tiananmen Square. According to researchers at Jinghua University, Chinese meteorological authorities sprayed the sky with chemicals, while a report in the South China Morning Post reported that residents in mountainous areas around Beijing saw rockets in the sky on June 30.
Cloud bombardment is a weather modification technique in which chemicals, such as small silver iodide particles, are added to the clouds, causing water droplets to accumulate around them and increasing the chance of rain. China has invested billions in this technique, especially for the 2008 Olympics, but also for crops, but it is provoking reactions as weather changes in one area affect the weather elsewhere.
Last year, Beijing announced a plan to manipulate the weather in a larger area of India, according to the Times.
According to the newspaper, on the eve of the centenary, the bombardment of clouds caused light rainfall and a reduction in air pollution in the Chinese capital, combined with other measures, such as the closure of factories and the reduction of car traffic.
The resulting artificial rain reduced the level of air pollutants PM2,5 by more than two thirds and changed the indication of the air quality index from "moderate" to "good".
The researchers published the findings in the journal Environmental Science, noting that as soon as the parade ended, factories opened and cars returned to the streets, air pollution returned to normal. It is characteristic that in order to prepare the scientists who devised the cloud bombing plan, they had studied the records for the weather of those days of the last decade and had prepared meteorological reports for every minute of June 30th and July 1st!
In the morning of that day, it seemed that it could drizzle, something that did not worry them, because it would not affect the parade, while the storm broke out in the afternoon, long after the end of the parade.
Source: protagon.gr