China is piercing clouds to fill its shrinking Yangtze River

• China has the largest programme in the world for cloud seeding.
• Hubei province in central China will use silver iodide rods to seed clouds and induce rainfall.
• China’s largest hydropower project, will raise water discharges by 500 million cubic meters.

As large portions of the country experience the greatest heat wave on record and the Yangtze River begins to dry up in some places, Chinese planes are shooting rods into the sky to increase rainfall.

Although several Yangtze River regions have started weather modification initiatives, several drought-stricken areas of the river’s basin have remained on standby due to insufficient cloud cover.

The Yangtze river basin’s drought, according to a warning from the Ministry of Water Resources on Wednesday, was “adversely affecting the drinking water security of rural people and livestock, and to the growth of crops.”

The Hubei province in central China said on Wednesday that it will use silver iodide rods to seed clouds and induce rainfall.

The cigarette-sized silver iodide rods are fired into existing clouds to aid in the formation of ice crystals. The cloud is subsequently given a boost in rain production by the crystals, increasing the amount of moisture in the cloud and its likelihood of release.

China has the largest programme in the world and has been using cloud seeding since the 1940s. In order to guarantee dry weather for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, seeding was used. This technique can also be used to soften hail or create snowfall.

According to Hubei’s Provincial Emergency Management Department, a severe drought has afflicted at least 4.2 million people in Hubei since June. Nearly 400,000 hectares of crops have been harmed by the heat and drought, and more than 150,000 people there have trouble getting access to drinking water.

The Yangtze River and the Rhine River in Germany are just two examples of the numerous rivers and lakes in the northern hemisphere that are shrinking and drying up as a result of the intense heat and little rainfall. The human-caused climate problem, which is being fueled by the combustion of fossil fuels, has intensified these extreme weather events.

Communities frequently rely on these bodies of water for economic activity, and governments are being forced to take expensive action by providing adaption measures and relief monies.

To address the effects on crops and livestock, China is allocating such monies and creating new supply sources. The Ministry of Finance announced earlier this week that some livestock had been temporarily moved to other areas and that it will distribute 300 million yuan ($44.30 million) in disaster relief.

The Three Gorges Dam, China’s largest hydropower project, will raise water discharges by 500 million cubic metres over the next ten days in order to bolster downstream supplies, the Ministry of Water Resources announced on Tuesday.

In order to alleviate a power deficit, officials in the southwestern province of Sichuan, which is home to 84 million people and is a major manufacturing hub, ordered the closure of all companies for six days this week.

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