n February 2009, a provincial weather bureau in,northeastern China fired 313 sticks of silver iodide,into the clouds over Beijing. Intended to alleviate the,Ilongest drought in almost 40 years, the effort led to,massive snowfall and the closure of 12 highways.1 Over the past decades, as weather modification technologies, such as cloud seeding, have matured and enlarged in terms of their scope to intervene with global climate change, the prospect of future man-made natural hazards has loomed larg