And I think it's going to rain today

March 27, 2018 5:11 PM

China Is Building a Rain-Making System Three Times as Big as Spain, “Modifying the weather in Tibet is a critical innovation to solve China’s water shortage problem.”
The system could increase the water supply by five to 10 billion cubic meters a year which will help China’s acute water shortage which imperils its economic future.
China Water Crisis The big picture.
posted by adamvasco (23 comments total)

It's only one line at the end of the second link -- but the obvious concern is that the system will just create new drought areas downwind. Worst case scenario: flash floods in the highlands, drought in the lowlands. Mass engineering of Earth's systems usually doesn't go well. Maybe China should put more effort into water conservation?

Also the second link notes in passing that creating hostile weather is an emerging area of interest in the military: flood the enemy out or create impassable terrain.

There's a number of reasons this might be a really bad idea with unintended consequences.
posted by Rumple at 5:31 PM on March 27, 2018 [13 favorites]

Holy fuck. Has nobody in China paid attention to Jeff Goldblum's warnings in Jurassic Park?
posted by signal at 5:53 PM on March 27, 2018 [13 favorites]

“Intercept Indian monsoon clouds” ummmmm... no mention of India’s reaction to this but I don’t think it’s going to be a passive one
posted by sixswitch at 6:24 PM on March 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

Yes, let's fuck with the monsoon. The ecological, economic, and humanitarian impacts of that are sure to be wonderful. I'm sure it will go exactly according to plan and there will be no unintended consequences whatsoever.

Fucking monkeys. Humans are just fucking monkeys.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:53 PM on March 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

there are longstanding territorial disputes between India and China and control over water from the Himalayas is part of the issue. this seems likely to ruffle some feathers.

i wish it were clearer whether this is a serious program that has a shot at success, a weird speculative shot-in-the-dark, or a politically protected government boondoggle. (i'd guess the latter but I don't know.)
posted by vogon_poet at 6:55 PM on March 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

The monsoon generally flows south to north so it has already passed over most of India when it reaches Tibet. I would presume downwind effects are most likely in northern Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan as well as China itself.
posted by Rumple at 7:10 PM on March 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I wish the articles had given some numbers about the total flow they are tapping into. I had a discussion with a guy doing meteorological support for cloud seeders in Canada and he said best case for their project they would tap something like 1 billionth of 1 percent of the moisture passing over head
posted by Mitheral at 7:23 PM on March 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Plot twist: it runs on orgone energy.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:50 PM on March 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

I've got an orgone accumulator
It makes me feel greater
I'll see you sometime later
When I'm through with my accumulator
posted by parki at 8:32 PM on March 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

This so obviously falls under the category: What could possibly go RIGHT?
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:27 PM on March 27, 2018 [5 favorites]

Bernard Vonnegut (August 29, 1914 – April 25, 1997) was an American atmospheric scientist credited with discovering that silver iodide could be used effectively in cloud seeding to produce snow and rain. He was the older brother of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut.

Ice nine is next.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:25 PM on March 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

As noted, the monsoon flows from south to north. India already has a humongous precipitation-generating barrier called the Himalaya, which is why pictures of Nepal, to the south of the divide, have luscious green valleys, and pictures of Tibet, which is leeward to the north, look like Mars. The Ganges would not miss any of its monsoon rainfall. Other rivers like the Indus, Tsangpo and Mekong could, if the Chinese manage to redirect a large part of their water, which would be huge engineering projects in their own right. See the map in the second link.

I'm actually a bit sceptical of how much water the links suggest the Chinese scheme could generate. It seems a lot to wring out of dry air moving over low ridges, after that air has already been forced over the top of Mt Everest.

In Australia, there is a cloud-seeding scheme over the main range of the high country in the south-east (where Mt Kosciuszko is). Interestingly, they are only allowed to seed during otherwise dry weather, to prevent the farmers on the leeward and dryer Canberra/Cooma side of the range from missing out on any rain or snow that they would naturally receive.
posted by other barry at 10:42 PM on March 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Great post, especially the last link, adamvasco! FT was behind a paywall though :(

I think this idea (if perhaps not this specific execution of it) actually has some potential and there is a lot of knee-jerk negative reaction/generalization in this thread, imo exacerbated by this being China and the US media generally using China as a negative comparison like how corrupt and bad it is or as an intimidating, rising Other. If ultimately we're able to do something like redirect rainfall from places where (e.g. the ocean) and when (in a huge storm?) it's not useful or it's too much, that'd be a pretty good tool of many to use to combat future water shortages, no?

Of course, I understand that the environment is very complex, that we need to be really careful about predicting/planning for consequences, and that there probably would be consequences that will be unforeseen but it seems worth looking into. And there's obviously the potential for powerful countries to re-inscribe global inequalities (who gets to decide which areas don't need as much rain?) even ignoring the potential hostile/military applications. Aaaand also there's precedent for big engineering projects in China being ultimately ramrodded through without a full and equal consideration of its effects (see: the Three Gorges Dam).

Anyhow it is worrying that between the first and second link only the SCMP goes a little into the unknown possible knock-on effects. And also they supposedly have a low environmental impact, releasing only vapour and carbon dioxide but adding more CO2 into the atmosphere seems like not such a great idea? But without knowing exactly how much it's really hard to say.

The issue of water shortages reminded me of this previous post about the situation in Cape Town, so I went and found an update!

TL;DR The water-saving measures seem to have worked and they've avoided running out of water in the meantime while plans for developing underground sources have been pushed up significantly. Most interesting to me though is that the new measures have a good chance of being extended and are also a glimpse into what we might all see a lot more of in the coming decades. Going by New York 2140 as my inspiration I think that people will just get used to the new normal, with the worst effects being felt as usual by the poor/marginalized.
posted by coolname at 10:45 PM on March 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Coolname: I’m reading New York 2140 right now. I’m about halfway through. What a mind bending book!
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:04 PM on March 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I find it hard to believe that there's One Cool Trick that would be more effective than known techniques like grey water reclamation. China needs to be doing much, much more to protect the environment; it's run up a massive technical debt and this looks like an attempt to put off the reckoning.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:51 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Each [solid fuel burning] chamber is able to be monitored and controlled by a smartphone app.
No hackers allowed!
posted by MtDewd at 6:13 AM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

also they supposedly have a low environmental impact, releasing only vapour and carbon dioxide

There are at least two problems with that line: Carbon dioxide is a vapour, and silver iodide isn't. I wonder if the original Chinese version said something more meaningful.
posted by sfenders at 6:57 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

FT hack
Try copying ......China’s acute water shortage which imperils its economic future.....into the google task bar and it should be the first link that comes up with no paywall.
posted by adamvasco at 7:55 AM on March 28, 2018

A few more links of possible interest
Can China Control the Weather?
From 2013 China creates 55 billion tons of artificial rain a year—and it plans to quintuple that.
Wiki and As planet gets ever hotter, silver iodide is seen as the rain-maker.
For The First Time, We've Watched Cloud Seeding Produce Snow.
posted by adamvasco at 8:10 AM on March 28, 2018

Manipulating weather is just a natural occurrence on planets with life like ours. I'm curious to see how it goes. Presumably there are consequences for many of us in locations rain is being diverted from. There are also lots of areas where rain seems pointless or wasteful. Freshwater rained into the ocean seems like it could be better used elsewhere.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:31 PM on March 28, 2018

Rain water into Ocean isn't wasted; it's how some snakes drink for example.
posted by Mitheral at 12:39 PM on March 28, 2018

What would be the effect of introducing that much silver iodide into the environment?
posted by A. Davey at 5:15 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Well, if you ingest enough it will turn you blue, but I suppose it's going to be pretty dilute if the furnaces work as expected. There are no reports of cloud-seeding operators developing argyria, anyway.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:36 PM on March 28, 2018