After successfully tackling its coronavirus outbreak, China is now setting its sights on taming the weather.
Last month, Beijing announced plans to develop a comprehensive weather modification system which by 2025 will cover more than 5.5 million square kilometres — 60% of the country’s territory and more than 1.5 times the size of India — with hail-suppression technologies embedded across 580,000 sq km.
Mastering the weather might seem like a lofty dream to some, but China has been using cloud seeding and other technologies for decades to produce more rain for drought-ridden areas, reduce hail that can damage agriculture, support disaster relief and clear skies for important events, such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China spent more than US$1.34 billion from 2012 to 2017 on different weather modification programmes, and by 2015 rainmaking and hail-suppression…
