- Researchers turn up the volume with a loudspeaker in the sky to make it rain
- Critics of the experiment say it wastes taxpayer money and creates noise pollution
Chinese scientists say they used sound waves to increase rainfall over the Tibetan plateau by up to 17 per cent.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, led by Professor Wang Guangqian from the university’s State Key Laboratory of Hydro-science and Engineering, said they recorded increases in rainfall of up to 17 per cent by pointing a giant loudspeaker at the sky.
The sound energy might have changed cloud physics, but the cause would require further investigation, researchers said in a peer-reviewed paper published in Scientia Sinica Technologica last week.
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Unlike other rainmaking technologies, sound generation produced no chemical pollution and required no “airborne vehicles such as aircraft or rockets”, Wang said. “And there is the possibility of remote control with low cost.”
The experiment is likely to add fuel to the long-running debate in China on the feasibility and environmental impact of large-scale weather modification programmes.
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Critics have accused Wang, who proposed the controversial Sky River project to increase rainfall across Tibet by intercepting wet air circulating over the plateau, of wasting taxpayers’ money. Others say that even if the sound stimulation method works, it would create noise pollution for the people and animals that live in the area.
In the study, the rainfall was 11 to 17 per cent higher in areas within the device’s effective range – a radius of about 500 metres from the sound generator – than outside it.
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Despite the findings, a researcher from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing who asked not to be named said Wang’s two-hour experiment would have to be replicated many times to gather more data.
While there has long been speculation that rainfall might be linked to sound – many civilisations perform rain dances in times of drought – the person said there were no physical theories to support the idea.
“The subject remains more of myth than science,” he said.