China's Weathermakers Prep for Olympics

Feb. 1, 2008 -- China, which is preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, has taken on a task that would flummox even Hurcules: controlling the weather.

Determined to prevent rain from dampening the spirits -- not to mention the crowds -- on opening day ceremonies, the government plans to seed any threatening clouds with chemicals to dispel, or at least delay, rainfall.

Though it sounds like a classroom assignment from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, weather modification programs have been around for more than 50 years. California and 10 western states in the United States regularly lace clouds with various substances to increase snow and rain, though the practice has not passed full scientific muster.

The problem is there are too many factors that affect the weather, making naturally occurring phenomena difficult to separate from man-made triggers.

Not that people haven't tried.

Roscoe Braham, who pioneered weather modification experiments at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, always believed it would be possible to change the weather, but years and years of tests were inconclusive.

"It was unfortunate," Braham said in an interview with Discovery News from his retirement home in North Carolina. "There was no strong scientific base for changing the weather."

"The atmosphere and nature are so broad and so big and the best efforts that man can put forth are really small in that respect," added Braham, who now serves as Scholar-in-Residence for North Carolina State University's Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.