Water-deficient Chinese cities are eyeing water resources in clouds to ease reservoir droughts.

Some 18.2 trillion cubic meters of water coagulated in clouds levitate across China every year. Artificial precipitation is considered an effective way to make use of the resource to refill ground and groundwater, according to experts at a national meteorological conference closed in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province on Monday.

The conference aimed at planning for the development of the meteorological work proposed that the country should make a comprehensive national planning for a coordinated artificial precipitation operation and emergency drought relief with the technology.

Some 20 million ha. of arable land and 400 out of China's 669 cities suffer dry spells every year. Water shortage has become a major bottleneck hindering local economic development.

In a decade between the year 1995 and 2004, artificial precipitation technology has helped drop more than 260 billion cubic meters of rainfall in China, according to statistics released at the conference.

(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2005)