A meteorological official yesterday acknowledged shortcomings still exist in attempts to modify the weather - after the big mess caused by the artificially induced snow in Beijing on Sunday triggered criticism from an uninformed public.

"It shows there is a lot of room to improve the national weather manipulation warning system for the public," Chen Zhenlin, spokesman of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), told China Daily.

Partly induced by 186 doses of silver iodide, a compound used in cloud seeding, more than 16 million tons of snow fell on the city, causing havoc with the power grid and delaying 200 flights at the Beijing Capital International Airport.