China Manufactures ‘Artificial Rain’ to Fight Drought

China’s ruling Communist Party ordered its meteorological bureau to dispatch special rain-making aircraft to drought-afflicted areas of the country’s south on Tuesday as part of a wider effort to protect China’s autumn harvest from ruination by a regional heatwave that began in June, the Global Times reported.

“[M]eteorological departments should promptly dispatch operational aircraft to severely drought-stricken areas and guide local governments in creating artificial rain,” China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MOA) and Ministry of Water Resources directed in an “urgent” joint notice issued on August 23.

The creation of artificial rain, also known as rainmaking or cloudseeding, “consists of spraying fine particles in aerosol or powder form into clouds at an altitude of two to four thousand meters,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) explained in 2019.

“A light aircraft fires flares filled with sodium chloride or silver iodide crystals into the clouds. The particles play the role of giant nuclei, making possible the condensation of water vapor contained in the cloud into droplets of water. Fifteen to thirty minutes later, down comes the rain,” AFP detailed.

“Another cheaper technique consists of launching small rockets from the ground containing the particles into the clouds. China, a leader in artificial rain development, uses military equipment already set up in arid regions from which to launch these rockets,” according to the news agency.

Beijing’s artificial rain edict on August 23 acknowledged that the combination of southern China’s latest heatwave and drought “poses a severe threat” to the region’s autumn grain production, which accounts for roughly 75 percent of China’s annual grain output.

Some of the Chinese regions experiencing the highest temperatures in recent days were “Central China’s Hunan Province, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province and [the municipality of] Chongqing, and East China’s Jiangxi Province,” according to a heat alert issued by China’s meteorological authority on Tuesday. The notice said the cited provinces had recently logged temperatures of “40 C [104 F] and above.”

Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at China’s public Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on August 23 that the Chinese provinces currently most affected by southern China’s persistent heatwave “are the main rice production areas in China, and about 80-90 percent of China’s rice seeding areas are in South China.”

“Rice is the largest food crop in China, accounting for about 40 percent of autumn grain production,” the state-run newspaper noted, citing data from the China News Service.

China’s National Meteorological Center (NMC) issued a drought alert on August 18 advising some parts of southern Chinese regions to “produce artificial rainfall when necessary.” The provinces and municipalities requiring artificial rain at the time spanned as far east as the Shanghai coastal region and as far west as Tibet.