China fires rods into sky to make rain…

Several regions on the Yangtze have launched weather modification programs, but with cloud cover too thin, operations in some drought-ravaged parts of the river’s basin have remained on standby.The Ministry of Water Resources said in a notice on Wednesday that drought throughout the Yangtze river basin was “adversely affecting drinking water security of rural people and livestock, and the growth of crops.“On Wednesday, central China’s Hubei province became the latest to announce it would seed clouds, using silver iodide rods to induce rainfall.The silver iodide rods — which are typically the size of cigarettes — are shot into existing clouds to help form ice crystals. The crystals then help the cloud produce more rain, making its moisture content heavier and more likely to be released.Cloud seeding has been in practice since the 1940s and China has the biggest program in the world. It used seeding ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to ensure dry weather for the event, and the technique can also be used to induce snowfall or to soften hail.At least 4.2 million people in Hubei have been affected by a severe drought since June, Hubei’s Provincial Emergency Management Department said Tuesday. More than 150,000 people there have difficulties accessing drinking water, and nearly 400,000 hectares of crops have been damaged because of high temperatures and drought.The Yangtze is just one of many rivers and lakes across the northern hemisphere that are drying up and shrinking amid relentless heat and low rainfall, including Lake Mead in the US and the Rhine River in Germany. These extreme weather conditions have been supercharged by the human-induced climate crisis, driven by burning fossil fuels. Communities often rely on these bodies of water for economic activity and governments are having to intervene with adaptation measures and relief funds, costing huge amounts of money.China is deploying such funds and developing new supply sources to deal with the impacts on crops and livestock. Some livestock has been temporarily relocated to other regions, the Ministry of Finance said earlier this week, adding it would issue 300 million yuan ($44.30 million) in disaster relief.‘);$vidEndSlate.removeClass(‘video__end-slate–inactive’).addClass(‘video__end-slate–active’);}};CNN.autoPlayVideoExist = (CNN.autoPlayVideoExist === true) ? true : false;var configObj = {thumb: ‘none’,video: ‘world/2022/07/26/china-heat-wave-quanzhou-bridge-buckle-jiang-ovn-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn’,width: ‘100%’,height: ‘100%’,section: ‘domestic’,profile: ‘expansion’,network: ‘cnn’,markupId: ‘body-text_18’,theoplayer: {allowNativeFullscreen: true},adsection: ‘const-article-inpage’,frameWidth: ‘100%’,frameHeight: ‘100%’,posterImageOverride: {“mini”:{“width”:220,“type”:“jpg”,“uri”:”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220726144900-screengrab-china-quanzhou-bridge-small-169.jpeg”,“height”:124},“xsmall”:{“width”:307,“type”:“jpg”,“uri”:”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220726144900-screengrab-china-quanzhou-bri …