China Raises a Protective Umbrella for Grain Production in Northeast China

Xinhua News Agency, Changchun, December 11 (Reporter Qi Haishan) - A medium-sized aircraft marked with the words “China Meteorological” and meteorological insignia recently arrived in Changchun, Jilin. This high-performance weather modification aircraft will help improve the weather modification capacity of the Northeast region, thereby building a “protective umbrella” for grain production in the Northeast region. It is reported that 2 more aircraft will be put into use next year.

This type of aircraft is equipped with China's most advanced large-scale seeding equipment and airborne cloud physics detection equipment, which can detect in real time the height, temperature, thickness, and condition of operational cloud systems, as well as cloud condensation height, supercooled water layer thickness, and ice crystal concentration, among other macro- and micro-physical data.

In August 2013, China established its first regional weather modification center in Changchun -- the Northeast Regional Weather Modification Center -- to promote the national economy, social development, increased agricultural production and income, and ecological environment construction in the Northeast region through weather modification.

Wang Xiaohui, director of the Northeast Regional Weather Modification Center, said that the operational scope covers Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. Through joint regional operations by aircraft and ground-based anti-aircraft guns and rockets, it provides support for major activities such as artificial rainfall enhancement, hail suppression, and artificial forest fire (protection) in the Northeast region.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2015, the total grain output of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia reached 148.005 million tons. As the Northeast region plays an increasingly important role in national food security, frequent natural disasters have become the greatest threat, among which drought has the most direct impact. Taking Jilin Province as an example, severe drought can cause grain output fluctuations of 2.5-5 million tons.

Weather modification has become an important means of responding to natural disasters. In 1958, Jilin Province used bombers to carry out artificial rainfall enhancement operations to alleviate drought, thus opening the prelude to weather modification in China. The current scale of operations ranks among the world's leading.

At present, the Northeast region has initially built a regionally integrated weather modification operational system consisting of monitoring and analysis, condition forecasting, decision-making and command, operation implementation, effect testing and technical support. It has also built an air-ground coordinated operation system covering the entire Northeast region, composed of aircraft as well as anti-aircraft guns and rockets, playing an important role in safeguarding grain production and forest and grassland fire prevention, hail prevention, fog and haze dispersal, water source conservation, ecology and many other aspects.