As Delhi-NCR's air quality level drops to 'severe' again after a brief improvement, the government is preparing to implement 'artificial rain in collaboration with IIT Kanpur in an effort to suppress the pollution.
The necessary approvals are scheduled to be given by the Supreme Court by Friday. The Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai and the IIT Kanpur experts are planning to implement a 'cloud seeding' method to induce artificial rain.
To understand the process, let us first understand what is 'cloud seeding'.
Clouds carry tiny water droplets or ice crystals after water vapour from the atmosphere cools and condenses around dust and salt.
Cloud seeding is a technique to make modifications in the weather to improve a cloud's ability to produce rain. This is done by introducing tiny ice nuclei into some types of subfreezing clouds. These newly introduced nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form.
After the process is done, newly formed snowflakes or water droplets grow at a rapid speed and start to fall from the cloud to the Earth's surface. This process can be carried from both ground-based generators or aircraft.
In layman's language, artificial rain is produced by injecting chemicals for the water droplets present in the atmosphere to become cooler and condensed for it to rail. Essentially, by cloud seeding, the process of water droplets becoming condensed is speeded up.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, the environment minister had a meeting with IIT Kanpur expert to discuss the process of cloud seeding and how it can be implemented. The national capital for over 5 days has been at AQI level 460 which is extremely hazardous. This has also resulted in many people complaining of itchy throats and coughing and irritation in their eyes.
The primary for this situation in the state is the practice of stubble burning in neighbouring states like Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Paresh.
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