Delhi Air Pollution: Scientists Hope to Curb Smog With Cloud Seeding, Rain

Indian scientists plan to seed clouds for the primary time to set off heavy rain in some areas of New Delhi, hoping this will probably be sufficient to sort out the smog gripping the world’s most polluted capital for per week, the mission’s head stated on Thursday.

Air high quality dips in Delhi forward of winter yearly, when chilly air traps pollution from quite a lot of sources together with automobiles, industries, building mud, and agricultural waste burning. 

Scientists count on some cloud cowl over the town round November 20 and are hoping this will probably be massive sufficient — and with excessive sufficient moisture content material — to set off heavy rain through seeding with salts, stated Manindra Agrawal, a scientist on the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, who’s main the trial.

The mission, estimated to price Rs. 1 crore for 100 sq. kilometres, would contain spraying into clouds a mixture of salts that embody silver iodine, Agrawal stated.

“We don’t expect that big a cloud that will cover entire Delhi, but a few hundred kilometres would be good,” he advised Reuters. 

The native authorities of the town of 20 million folks, unfold over roughly 1,500 sq. kilometres, has already shut all faculties, stopped building actions, and stated it’ll impose restrictions on car use to management air pollution.

The air high quality index within the metropolis was 506 early on Thursday, which is categorised as “hazardous” by Swiss group IQAir.

Delhi wants heavy and widespread rain to wash away the pollution, and light-weight rain may worsen the state of affairs, stated Gufran Beig, the founder director of the federal authorities’s air-quality monitoring company SAFAR.

Beig added that present airflow is carrying smoke from crop residue burning within the states of Punjab and Haryana to Delhi, which additionally has its personal air pollution sources and the place there’s at the moment virtually no wind. 

“So unless a huge pressure is established by intense rain, this chain of transport from Punjab to Delhi will not be broken, and once it is broken it is difficult for the chain to form again for some time,” he advised Reuters. 

About 38 % of the air pollution within the capital has been brought on by stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, the place over 22,000 stubble burning occasions have been recorded between September 15 and November 7, in accordance to a authorities assertion.

Stubble burning is a observe adopted by farmers whereby crop stubble left behind after rice is harvested is burnt to rapidly clear fields earlier than planting wheat crops. 

The federal authorities has directed authorities in each states to “take effective actions” to examine additional stubble burning, the assertion added. 

The Delhi authorities is looking for to get approval for the mission from the Supreme Court, which is listening to petitions associated to air pollution.

Several international locations have used cloud seeding to produce rain, enhance air high quality and water crops in time of drought, together with Mexico, the United States, China, Indonesia and Malaysia. 

However, in 2021, a plan to seed clouds over the mountains of New Mexico to enhance snowfall was pulled after allegations it may poison folks and the setting.

© Thomson Reuters 2023