Chinese Scientists Use Sound Waves to Increase Rainfall on Tibetan Plateau

• Team from Tsinghua University use sound energy to increase rainfall on Tibetan Plateau by up to 17 per cent

• Researchers say that the technique has no detrimental impact on the environment, but more data needed to prove its efficacy

Powerful, low-frequency sound waves could be used to trigger rainfall in areas that suffer from drought, according to a study by researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In a weather manipulation experiment conducted on the Tibetan Plateau last year, the researchers said they recorded increases in rainfall of up to 17 per cent by pointing a giant loudspeaker at the sky.

“The total annual atmospheric water vapor resource in China is about 20 trillion tons. [But] only 20 per cent forms natural precipitation that reaches the ground, and the precipitation conversion rate in western regions is even smaller,” said the team led by Professor Wang Guangqian from the university’s State Key Laboratory of Hydro-science and Engineering.

Powerful, low-frequency sound waves could be used to trigger rainfall in areas that suffer from drought

The sound energy might have changed cloud physics, but the cause of the phenomenon would require further investigation, the researchers said in a peer-reviewed paper published in Scientia Sinica Technologica last week..

Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3120415/lets-get-cloud-chinese-scientists-turn-volume-and-make-it-pour