Application for CINRAD Data in the Evaluation of Ground-Based Weather Modification

Due to the adverse effects of such meteorological events as drought and hail, to the social and economic development, weather modification activities have arisen quickly in many countries since they appeared in the world in the late 1940s. However, so far there has been great arguments about the effects of them, because of the unknown and complication of cloud processes. In this paper a physical method is developed to evaluated the ground-based weather modification by using the Chinese Next Generation Radar(CINRAD) data at various elevations, jointly with the use of GPS data of the launching sites. Case studies showed that the mean basic reflectivities of PPI in the seeding regions enhanced significantly around the seeding layer in 10min or so, then spread down to the low layer, and were somewhat different with that in the unseeding regions, which to some extent, demonstrated the microphysical effects of cloud seeding.