TITLE:
Artificial Seeding Effects of Convective Clouds on the Opening Day of Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics
AUTHORS:
Hongyu Li, Yanping Dai, Hua Wang, Jingang Cui
KEYWORDS:
Cloud Seeding, Convective Clouds, Olympics
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.5 No.4,
April
25,
2017
ABSTRACT: Using the radar reflectivity and intensive rainfall data, artificial seeding effects of convective clouds in Beijing on 8 August 2008, the opening day of the 29th Summer Olympics, were analyzed. The results indicate that, cloud seeding at single operation site for convective clouds invading from southwest direction may sharply mitigate the rainfall observed at leeward automatic weather stations within 5 - 10 min, while enhances the precipitation at a later stage about 10 - 20 min. Cloud seeding effects of operation sites Yuegezhuangxi, Changgouzhen, and Zhoukou, which are placed along the main moving routes or localized developing convective clouds in the west and center parts of Fangshan district, are very conspicuous. Combining the operation sites distribution and radar echoes, it is found that the site Changgouzhen, which is very close to the convective core, plays an essential role in suppressing the growth of convective cloud, reducing the coverage area of intense echoes classified as 45 - 60 dBZ, as well as mitigating the precipitation from neighboring automatic weather stations. Based on radar reflectivity and rainfall data, we find that the clouds over lots of operation sites in eastern Fangshan district are not cold enough to favor glaciogenic seeding with silver iodide, meanwhile, there is not too much precipitation observed.