Low moisture content in clouds did not cause rain despite seeding

IIT-Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal on Wednesday said that although the cloud seeding trial in Delhi did not bring rain, it provided useful information, and asserted that the cost of the process was not much compared to the money spent on pollution control measures in the city.

The Delhi government conducted two cloud-seeding trials in Burari, north Karol Bagh, and Mayur Vihar on Tuesday in collaboration with IIT-Kanpur, but there was no rain. Minimal rainfall was recorded in Noida and Greater Noida after the trials.

"The trial was conducted over an area of 300 square kilometres. The overall cost of that, in my rough estimate, came to around Rs 60 lakh. It roughly comes to around Rs 20,000 per square kilometre.

"If we conduct the exercise over an area of 1,000 square kilometres, the cost would be around Rs 2 crore," Agrawal explained in a video statement.

Delving into further details, he said if it is conducted over the entire winter period, and it is assumed that clouds are present once in 10 days, the cost would come to around Rs 25 to Rs 30 crore.

"That, in the overall scheme of things, is not a very large amount. The amount of money spent on pollution control in Delhi is quite large," the IIT-Kanpur director said.

He asserted that in the absence of a lot of cloud moisture, the possibility of inducing rainfall got reduced.

"It (moisture content) was only around 15 per cent. With that low moisture content, the possibility of making rain is very low. We did not achieve success from that perspective, but we got a lot of useful information.

"We set up 15 stations at various locations to measure air pollution and moisture levels. There has been some reduction in PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations. Even with a low level of moisture, seeding does have some impact, albeit not the same that one would ideally like to see," he said.

Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa on Wednesday said the cloud-seeding trials in the national capital were successful and slammed the opposition AAP saying they are "jealous" of the success of the BJP-led government.

The Delhi government conducted two cloud-seeding trials on Tuesday in collaboration with IIT-Kanpur but there was no precipitation in Delhi. Minimal rainfall was recorded in Noida and Greater Noida after the trials.

The trials were conducted in parts of Delhi, including Burari, north Karol Bagh, Mayur Vihar.

Talking about the trials, Sirsa told PTI that the previous government tried to conduct the exercise but they were unsuccessful.

"We reached a stage where we could conduct the exercise. Nine to 10 trials will be conducted and then we will get to know at what moisture content rain can be induced. Once IIT-Kanpur have concrete information on the moisture content needed to induce rain, we will be able to utilise it to have artificial rain in Delhi when needed," he told PTI Videos.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) questioned the Delhi government's cloud-seeding exercise, saying no rainfall was recorded despite claims of artificial rain and raising doubts over the feasibility of such experiments in the national capital.

"AAP will obviously raise questions. They were unsuccessful in the last 10 years and ruined Delhi. Now Chhath is being celebrated on the bank of river Yamuna. The river is cleaner. Green crackers were allowed and still the pollution levels are in control. How can they tolerate this?" he asked.