Just as in the United Arab Emirates, China has just carried out a successful weather modification procedure for an event in Tiananmen Square.

In a move similar to the one implemented in the United Arab Emirates some time ago, China used cloud seeding to control the weather, rainfall and pollution in Beijing ahead of a major political event held last July, which scientists from Tsinghua University are now assessing positively.

According to reports in the Chinese press, a team of researchers has claimed that during the recent celebration of the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the authorities managed to modify Beijing’s weather for the tens of thousands of people who attended the commemorative ceremony, held precisely in Tiananmen Square.

For the occasion of the weather control test in China, the government launched a large-scale operation, seeding clouds with chemicals to trigger rain beforehand in the suburbs of Beijing and some neighboring areas, hours before the Communist Party celebrated its centenary on July 1.

According to the scientific findings, the artificial rain created on that occasion reduced the level of the air pollutant PM2.5 by more than two-thirds and improved air quality from “moderate” to “good” under World Health Organization standards.

The Beijing university team, led by Wang Can, a professor of environmental sciences, which carried out the weather maneuver in the Chinese capital, said it was unlikely that this drop in pollution had a natural cause, since “the artificial rain was the only disruptive event in that period.”

It is worth mentioning that the research confirming the events was published in Environmental Science, a peer-reviewed Chinese journal, on November 26.

Tens of thousands of people attended the heavily guarded event in Tiananmen Square, which began at 8 a.m. under cloudy skies.

However, the scientific report noted that the ceremony proceeded under normal weather for a two-hour period, after which a heavy downpour hit the area.

This is not China’s first attempt to manipulate the weather

This was not the first attempt to manipulate the weather in China, as the country’s meteorological authorities have been trying to alter weather conditions for major events since 2008, when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.

According to the Tsinghua scientists, the party’s centenary presented unprecedented challenges, one of them being the unexpected rise in air pollutants in the run-up to the anniversary.

Although most industrial activities, such as factories and cargo trucks, were halted in Beijing and nearby provinces for the celebration, air circulation was also reduced, which made it difficult for pollutants to dissipate.

Another factor considered was that the Chinese capital also recorded its wettest summer weather of 2021, with nearly double the average amount of rainfall.

Strikingly, it rained almost every day during the week before the ceremony, and on the day of the celebration, audience members were given raincoats as part of a courtesy package for the event, which they never used.

According to media reports, the two-hour cloud seeding operation began at 8:30 p.m. the night before, when people living in the mountains southwest of the city said they saw a large number of rockets, used to send silver iodide into the sky to stimulate rain, on June 30.

Finally, it should be noted that China has built some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated networks for weather modification.

Last year, the government launched a weather modification program covering a vast area in the west of the country, including Xinjiang and Tibet, but with a process that involved sound waves intercepting moist air at high altitude.

The operation included satellites, aircraft, mobile radar stations and artificial intelligence technology, aimed at predicting the movement of moist air in order to carry out cloud seeding operations with hourly precision.

Source: Forbes