The Delhi Government and IIT Kanpur have collaborated on a “Cloud Seeding” initiative, which aims to combat air pollution via inducing artificial rainfall to settle particulate matter.
What is Cloud Seeding
This process involves producing artificial rain via dispersing particles such as silver iodide or salt-based components into moisture-laden clouds. However, these particles help in combining smaller droplets into larger ones, which leads to rainfall.
This is the a significant initiative taken by the Delhi Government to tackle one of the major environmental crisis, i.e. air pollution.
Official Response on the Initiative
Rekha Gupta, Delhi’s Chief Minister, said, “Cloud seeding is a necessity for Delhi, and is the first experiment of its kind. We want to try it in Delhi to see if it can help us control this very serious environmental problem.“
However, data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) shows an average AQI of 304 was recorded at 10 am on Tuesday.
Manjinder Singh, Delhi’s Environment Minister, said on Tuesday Delhi may carry out its first trial for cloud seeding today, after the aircraft equipped to carry out the exercise arrives from Kanpur once visibility improves there.
Although this may be a crucial step to tackle the problem of air pollution in the country’s capital, there are several questions which can be raised with regard to the same initiative.
• Is cloud seeding effective in Delhi’s winter conditions?
• Can the effectiveness be accurately measured?
• What are the long-term impacts of seeding agents?
• Could it cause unwanted weather changes?
• Will it address the root cause?
• Does this promote “techno-optimism” over necessary policy changes?
• Is this an ethical way to manipulate weather?
These aforementioned questions need to be addressed because, not only the short-term goals, but also the long-term impacts of this initiative needs to be taken into consideration.
