Red Heart

A friend from the south stayed in Beijing for a week and he was amazed by the weather.

“ This is like in the south. Every night it rains!” He told me.

Not only him, but also most people living here are happily surprised by the weather. Beijing's summer is called “ Stove” by people. At the beginning of July the temperature commonly reaches over 37 degrees centigrade, even sometimes over 40 degrees centigrade. But this summer the temperature stays around 35 centigrade degree. Even more unusual is taht alomost every night,after around 9pm it will rain. The next morning when it stops, It will cool, moist and air is fresh.

These are the artificial rains.

The duty of the government is not only to work out the plans to balance the overheating economy but also to finish a “ Blue Sky Index”, a mission called by the coming Olympics.

The 2008 Olympics drives Beijing for many things. Because of no space for stadium, they demolish the Hutongs. Because of the air is bad, they make rains. The public concern had been raised on Beijing's weather, especially this spring international press reported a lot on Beijing's bad sand storm, Will there be sand storms during 2008 Olympics? Can the international athletes stand the Beijing's polluted air then?

Beijing has been reported as one of the top 10 polluted cities in the world for years, for the first time it is seriously thinking of how to face the questions from international world. “Blue Sky Index” was started in 2002, the basic goal is to reach 230 blue sky days per year. In 2006, the task is promoted to 238 days.

The deputy director of Beijing Local Environment Ministry, Mr Du Shaozhong said in the first half year of 2006 only reached 107 blue sky days and there were 10 days less than the original index. He called it a tough situation to achieve the 131 days in the following half year. It means to make 21.8 days per month. Mr Du called: “ the God helps us, we human need to work hard... We're not gonna give up on the Blue Sky Index.”

Beijing is working hard to reach the Blue Sky Index . “ Once the condition allows, we'll make artificial rain.” Ms Zhang Qiang, director of Beijing Artificial Weather office said.

So far the main technology to make artificial rain is to use the bombs of AgI and Dry Ice. Each artificial rain needs 3-5 rocket launcher and 20-30 the bombs. Each launcher costs RMB 30,000-50,000yuan, and each bomb costs about RMB 2000yuan. To make an artificial rains needs about RMB 300,000yuan.

This is the expensive cost of the Blue Sky Index. Imagine to make artificial rain each week or each day, how much it would cost?

Not only in Beijing, but also in other big cities of China are raising a big interest in making artificial rains. It becomes a competition, between the cities Shanghai and Tianjin, provinces Guangdong and Fujian.

In the summer of 2003, Shanghai was hit by unusual heat wave. It was reported as the hottest summer in the recent 50 years. For teh next 40 days the temperature was continiously above 35 degrees centigrade, during which 19 days were over 39.6 degrees centigrade.

There was an enormous shortage of electricity, as millions of fans and air conditioners had to run for 24 hours a day. Shanghai city made the decision to force 4000 enterprises to shut down their factories every other day, in order to make sure the basic electricity for veryday life. The worst time even the most famous Shanghai night scene The Bund was asked to turn off the tour lights. After a hundred years this well-known non-stop lights night scene was sinking into dark. At the end of the summer a number of big companies reported their losses were over tens of millions of RMB during that summer.

The same summer Beijing was also hot, but it cooled itself down the city by making artificial rains. Soon cities around China such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing,Suzhou, Wuxi, Guangzhou etc all purchased their launchers and bombs to make artificial rains. According to an official survey, in 2003, the total cost of making artificial rain was RMB 416 million yuan. From 1995 to 2003, RMB 2.2 billion yuan was invested for artificial rain.

Article from Xinhua reported that the benefits compared to the cost of artificial rain was between five to one to twenty to one. But there was no exact assay or data to explain how this result came out.

From the Beijing experience, the artificial rains just cooling down the air a bit, but our fans and air conditionersare still running everyday. We are not able to see blue sky as it's totally cloudy and foggy.

The problems of polluted air and the shortage of electricity still remain. Can we really get over it?

Some people are worried if the sand storms will be prolonged to summer. Can you imagine the athletes playing in the fields with dust and fog, and all audience wearing marks?