In the 1980s, the government began making substantial investments in cloud physics and related fields. Weather modification, by comparison, is relatively inexpensive. In recent decades, as the country has grown wealthier, Earth-altering projects such as the Three Gorges Dam have become a favored solution. Because of that ongoing toll, the government has staked its legitimacy in part on how well it responds to such incidents. Meteorological calamities such as hail and flooding account for more than 70% of the country's annual disaster-related damage.

Although China ratified the treaty in 2005, its interest in controlling the weather and the environment didn’t wane. These uses so alarmed policy makers that they began seeking an international agreement to end “environmental warfare.” In 1978, the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification went into force. military weaponized cloud seeding to inhibit enemy troop movements and reduce the effectiveness of anti-aircraft attacks, among other things. Twelve years later, the government was spending millions of dollars on weather-modification research each year, and 15 other companies had started cloud-seeding operations in 23 states. By 1953, roughly 10% of the land area of the U.S. discovered that dry ice can create precipitation when it interacts with clouds under certain conditions. But it wasn’t until 1946 that scientists at General Electric Co. Humans have dreamed of controlling the weather for millennia. For China, and the world, these concerns need to be addressed soon. Details are sketchy, but fears are rising about the potential military uses of these capabilities, and their effects on an already changing climate. Earlier this month, China announced plans to expand its rainmaking capabilities to cover nearly 60% of the country by 2025. But that modesty is starting to give way. Generally, its goals have been modest: more rain in arid places, less field-destroying hail and sunny days for big national events. But for decades, China has been home to one of the world's most advanced weather-modification programs. It sounds like something out of a cartoon.

Over the next 24 hours, the county received more than two inches of rain that, according to local officials, alleviated the drought, lowered the risk of forest fires and improved air quality. The operation, ordered up by the Juye County Meteorological Bureau in response to a local drought, was reportedly a success. Last month, 16 “artificial rain enhancement rockets” were launched off the back of a pickup truck 300 miles south of Beijing.

Secret government weather machine