Beijing locals woke up to a surprise this weekend when some unexpected snow blanketed the Chinese capital. The snow, both early and unusually substantial, was the result of a governmental helping hand.
According the Guardian UK, Beijing Weather Modification Office workers fired 186 doses of silver iodide into the air between 8pm on Saturday and 11.25am yesterday to prompt precipitation, causing 16 million cubic metres (565 million cubic feet) of snow to fall on the city.
The process called cloud seeding involves firing rockets of dispersing substances (commonly silver iodide or frozen carbon dioxide) into the clouds, resulting in cloud condensation, which in turns alters the microphysical processes within the cloud, creating rain or snow.
“We have to seize every opportunity to increase precipitation,” explained Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, to the Global Times. “Beijing had almost no rainfall in October.”
Via: Guardian UK and Treehugger
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