In the capital of India’s most populous nation, 40 million people in the city of New Delhi, India, cough and splutter through weeks of intoxicated air.
It resembles clockwork in modern times. Every winter, a toxic mix of exhaust, smoke, and dust that blurs skylines and stings the lungs looms over New Delhi and its nearby satellite cities.
One week prior, as people celebrated the annual Hindu festival of light, Diwali, the skies were lit up with firecrackers, which increased the fumes. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is under the leadership of Delhi’s new government, believes that the solution to reducing the impact of the rain, perhaps now, by artificially “seeding clouds” to remove the fumes, lies in making it rain.
What is the government of Delhi doing?
A small aircraft sprayed small amounts of sodium chloride and silver iodide on Tuesday afternoon, creating artificial rain over Delhi.
The national capital’s air quality is deteriorating, and the cloud seeding trial aims to address this problem.
500 kilometers from New Delhi, an aircraft took off from Kanpur, a city in Uttar Pradesh. The cloud-seeding exercise was conducted over a portion of the capital in consultation with scientists from the city’s Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) branch.
The government conducted a test flight last week, and it was praised for its success. Rekha Gupta, the chief minister of Delhi, referred to it as a “necessity” for Delhi and a “pioneering step” in the direction of New Delhi’s persistent environmental issues.
Delhi is choking, why?
Delhi’s air is a toxic, dense mixture of dust, smoke, and chemicals every winter.
Slow winds and a “temperature inversion” weather pattern trap pollutants close to the ground as temperatures drop.
Fine particles known as PM2.5, which are small enough to enter the bloodstream, buildup from construction dust, car emissions, factories, and crop stubble burning in nearby agricultural states, create plumes of black carbon and smoke.
In the air, these combine with gases like nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide to form new, even worse, particles. The city is blanketed in a grey, choking haze as a result.
Long-term exposure has been linked to heart and lung diseases, respiratory infections, and adverse birth outcomes due to the deadly combination of airborne particles.
Delhi lived up to its reputation as one of the world’s most polluted cities, and the fireworks from Diwali only made the atmosphere more intoxicating.
What is the process of cloud seeding?
In some ways, it resembles “nudging” the sky into raining. According to their predictions of the moisture distribution, scientists choose a cloud to “seed” based on its type, height, atmospheric status, and stratification.
Then, loaded planes or drones spray tiny, typically silver iodide-filled clouds with water. These act like “seeds,” giving water vapour a place to cling to. These particles become heavier as more droplets gather around them, eventually falling as rain, hopefully removing the low-hanging pollution as they do.
Images shared by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur on Tuesday showed substances being released from flares attached to aircraft while it was in cloudy skies.
Is it effective?
The scientific findings were contradictory. In a column for The Hindu on October 24, Shahzad Gani and Krishna AchutaRao, professors at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi, noted that cloud seeding cannot create natural clouds, and that the evidence for reliable rainfall increases is still in dispute.
Additionally, experts worry that an excessive accumulation of these salts in the soil could harm the ecosystem.
According to experts, artificial rain only offers a temporary respite from a persistent issue in New Delhi.
According to Gani and AchutaRao, “cloud seeding is just another gimmick in a line of similar unscientific ideas, like smog towers,” which suggest flashy interventions can be used in place of serious structural solutions.
Source: Aljazeera
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