One reason for confusion over China's weather modification efforts is its relative lack of transparency.
Duncan Axisa, president of the Weather Modification Association in Fresno, Calif.
The Beijing Weather Modification Office gained fame around last year's Beijing Olympics for trying to drain clouds near the city ahead of Aug. 8 Opening Ceremonies.
It can augment precipitation, but only by perhaps 10% to 20%, says Wang Guanghe, director of the Institute of Weather Modification at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences.
Weather modification's "power is still limited, " Mr. Wang says.
When reports of Operation Popeye surfaced in the media, Congress held hearings, the United Nations created a convention banning future military use of weather modification technologies and the nascent field of weather modification appeared to go the way of the passenger train until recently.
Experts say the sort of exact estimates attributed to the Beijing Weather Modification Office official by Xinhua -- 16 million tons of extra snow -- is nearly impossible to make for any individual storm, although statistics gathered painstakingly over years can enable estimates of the effectiveness of longer-term efforts.
"The Chinese weather-modification program is a really closed program, " he says.
China's weather-modification experts have published relatively little in English.
The confusion over the government's role in the latest blizzard reflects both the scope of China's weather-modification efforts, and the aura of almost mystical ability that surrounds them in the minds of many Chinese and foreign observers.
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