14 DAY TRIAL // China is currently experiencing a major air pollution crisis and, despite its best efforts to curb air pollutants emissions, things seem to be going from bad to worse.
The good news is that, according to a document leaked by the country's Meteorological Administration, the country might still have a chance of making the air hovering over it a tad more breathable.
Thus, local media reports that high officials in China are thinking about using artificial rain to reduce smog concentrations across the country.
More precisely, they want to ask scientists to carry out cloud seeding processes. This means that the upper part of clouds over the country would be injected with particles that would work as nucleation points and that would cause ice crystals to form around them.
These ice crystals would then fall to the ground either as snow or as rain.
These man-made rainfalls / snowfalls are expected to give the air over China a good cleaning, and thus make life more bearable for the country's residents.
Should the Chinese government move forward with this plan, the first artificial rains might fall over China sometime in 2015.
Huffington Post tells us that this method of curbing air pollution has already been used in several regions across China, and has proven quite successful.
Otherwise put, high officials and scientists need only figure out how to implement the technology on a much larger scale.
Although it all sounds very good on paper, some specialists are doubtful that cloud seeding will do the trick and help China solve its air pollution crisis.
Researcher Steven Siems with Australia's Monash University argues that, since the smog hovering over the country is made up of soot and dust particles, this should have been more than enough to cause rainfall and clear the air.
He argues that, since the particles that make up smog have failed to act as nucleation points, it is unlikely that whatever compounds the country's high officials wish to inject clouds with will.