No notice of snow gets cold reaction from public

By Wang Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-04 08:13

A meteorological official yesterday acknowledged shortcomings still exist in attempts to modify the weather - after the big mess caused by the artificially induced snow in Beijing on Sunday triggered criticism from an uninformed public.

"It shows there is a lot of room to improve the national weather manipulation warning system for the public," Chen Zhenlin, spokesman of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), told China Daily.

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Partly induced by 186 doses of silver iodide, a compound used in cloud seeding, more than 16 million tons of snow fell on the city, causing havoc with the power grid and delaying 200 flights at the Beijing Capital International Airport.

But the public has been questioning why the government can manipulate the weather but cannot warn people in advance to give them time to be prepared.

Thousands of passengers were trapped for hours at the Beijing Capital International Airport, including Google's former China head Kai-Fu Lee, who planned to fly to Taipei on Sunday.

Lee wrote in his blog that after staying in the airport for 17 hours, he finally got home.

Regulations issued in 2002 state that public security departments must be informed of weather modification to ensure security in the influenced area, but do not mention other departments or individuals.

The capital's first snowfall of the year started early Sunday and blanketed the city immediately, leaving tree branches broken and electrical wires damaged.

The heavy snow disrupted the capital's electricity distribution grid 60 times on Sunday, causing blackouts in the districts of Changping, Shunyi, Chaoyang and Haidian, the Beijing Electric Power Company said.

The temperature in the capital plummeted overnight from 13.5 C to below 0 C on Sunday, prompting the capital to push up its heating plan ahead of schedule.

However, many weather experts think that the public overrated the influence of the weather manipulation.

Ye Qian, assistant president of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, said artificial means can only modify the weather, not change it.

"It is all about luck when we manipulate the weather. Artificial methods are still experimental and no one can tell how much we can manipulate the weather," Ye said.

Sunday's snowfall was the earliest first snow in the past 22 years in Beijing. It came a month earlier than Nov 29, the average date in the past five decades for the first snow of the year, according to the Beijing meteorological bureau.

A CMA official who refused to be named told China Daily yesterday that artificial weather is not that effective and some officers and media are exaggerating its impact.

"It is impossible to say what the weather manipulation plan is in the weather forecast," said Sun Jisong, chief weatherman with the Beijing meteorological bureau.

The Beijing Weather Modification Office said it had used artificial means to increase snow to ease the drought.

"We won't miss any opportunity for artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering lingering drought," said Zhang Qiang, head of the office.