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A costly attempt to get Delhi to receive artificial rain remained unsuccessful on Tuesday, while more experiments were in the pipeline, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government said after carrying out a cloud-seeding trial over smog-choked city amid ‘very poor’ air quality.
New Delhi:
Attempts to induce rain through cloud seeding in parts of Delhi on Tuesday were “not completely successful” because the moisture content in the clouds was low and the process is not a magic bullet for the problem of pollution, but an SOS solution, IIT Kanpur Director Manindra Agarwal has said.
Speaking exclusively to NDTV on Tuesday, Agarwal, whose institute is collaborating with the Delhi government to carry out the experiment, also said attempts will be made again on Wednesday, and they are hoping for a better result.
Explaining that the mixture used by the team has only 20% silver iodide and the rest is a combination of rock salt and common salt, Agarwal said 14 flares were fired on Tuesday.
The attempt to induce artificial rain over Delhi is said to have costed over ₹1 crore.
A small, single-propeller aircraft operated by IIT Kanpur hovered over northwest Delhi and parts of the National Capital Region on Tuesday, firing silver iodide flares in two cloud seeding trials that failed to produce rain – an attempt that Delhi’s environment minister still called “successful”.
How much did Delhi cloud seeding attempt cost?
The Delhi Cabinet approved the cloud seeding project on May 7, allocating ₹3.21 crore for five trials – roughly ₹64 lakh per attempt.
Planned in partnership with IIT Kanpur, the trials were initially slated for late May and early June but faced two postponements: first to late August and early September due to the southwest monsoon’s arrival, and again as rains persisted in the region.
How was cloud seeding over Delhi done and why did it not rain?
The Cessna aircraft fired 16 flares – eight in each trial – containing silver iodide and sodium chloride compounds over Burari and surrounding areas, Mayur Vihar, and Noida in attempts to induce rain in a bid to bring down air pollution levels.
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