Beijing scientists tout plan to shield Olympics from rain

BEIJING — It is yet another attempt by man to triumph over nature.

Determined not to let anything spoil their party, organizers of the 2008 Summer Olympics said they have taken control over the most unpredictable element of all — the weather.

Meteorologists have been perfecting what they call "weather modification" techniques to make sure rain doesn't fall on the stadium where the Olympics' opening ceremony is to take place Aug. 8.

"Our team is trained. Our preparations are complete," said Wang Jianjie, a spokeswoman from the Beijing meteorological bureau addressing a news conference Wednesday at the headquarters of the Beijing organizing committee.

The Chinese are among the world's leaders in weather manipulation but have more experience creating rain than preventing it. In fact, the techniques are virtually the same. Meteorologists blast into the clouds exploding shells that release particles of silver iodide, a compound used in photography. That breaks up the water droplets into smaller sizes that are less likely to fall. Another cloud-seeding technique is to induce the rain before the event, which has the added benefit of washing away Beijing's notorious dust and smog.

The manipulation would be used only on a small area, leaving what is essentially a dry spot around the 100,000-seat Olympic stadium. The $400 million stadium, nicknamed the "bird's nest" for its design of interlacing steel beams, has no roof.

"This is really a very complex process in terms of selecting the place and the time," said Wang Yubin, an engineer from the meteorological bureau. "Probably we will have to decide one day before or very close to the event."

Jeff Ruffalo, a public-relations adviser to the Beijing Olympics, believes this is a first for the Summer Olympics, which in recent years have taken place in drier cities.

Summer is the rainy season in Asia. Originally, the Beijing Olympics were to open July 25, but meteorologists urged that the date be pushed back as late as possible while keeping in mind these are the Summer Games. Still, the chances of rain in Beijing on Aug. 8 are close to 50 percent.

Training with the Olympics in mind, the meteorologists have been practicing their "rain mitigation" techniques since 2006. They have had a couple of dry runs, so to speak — a China-Africa summit and a Panda festival in Sichuan province, among others.

The bureau of weather modification was established in the 1980s and is believed to be the largest in the world. It has a reserve army of 37,000 people — most of them, in effect, weekend warriors who are called to duty during unusual droughts. Like its own branch of the military, it has 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 anti-aircraft guns, according to Wang Guohe, director of weather modification for the Chinese Academy of Meteorology.

"We have the largest program in the world with the most people involved and the most equipment, but it is not really the most advanced," Wang said. That honor belongs to the Russians, who he says used sophisticated cloud-seeding in 1986 to prevent radioactive rain from the Chernobyl reactor accident from reaching Moscow.

Although many scientists dispute the effectiveness of weather modification, Wang insists that it has been successful in China on a limited scale.

"If you're talking about a small rainfall, you can eliminate it," Wang said. "But if it's going to be raining cats and dogs, there's nothing man can do about it."