India trialed cloud seeding over its smog-filled capital for the first time, spraying a chemical from an airplane to encourage rain and wash deadly particles out of the air.
Cloud seeding is the practice of using airplanes to fire salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain.
New Delhi city authorities, working with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, launched a test run on Thursday afternoon using a Cessna light airplane over the city’s northern Burari area.
Photo: EPA
“A trial seeding flight was done... in which cloud seeding flares were fired,” Delhi Minister for Environment, Forest and Wildlife Manjinder Singh Sirsa said in a statement on Thursday.
It comes ahead of a planned rollout of the scheme.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that “if conditions remain favorable, Delhi will experience its first artificial rain on Oct. 29.”
It was not immediately clear what chemical was used in the test to encourage the rain.
New Delhi and its sprawling metropolitan region of 30 million people are regularly ranked among the world’s most polluted capitals, with acrid smog blanketing the skyline each winter.
Cooler air traps pollutants close to the ground, creating a deadly mix of emissions from crop burning, factories and heavy traffic.
Levels of PM2.5 — cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream — at times rise to as much as 60 times UN daily health limits.
Pollution rose this week after days of fireworks launched to mark the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, shooting PM2.5 levels to more than 56 times the limit.
That came after the Indian Supreme Court this month eased a blanket ban on fireworks to allow the use of the less-polluting “green” crackers — developed to reduce particulate emission.
At dawn on Thursday, PM2.5 levels were 154 micrograms per cubic meter in parts of New Delhi, according to monitoring organization IQAir, just more than 10 times WHO limits.
A study last month found that the noxious air is even turning Delhi’s iconic 17th-century Red Fort black.
Invented in the 1940s, countries have been seeding clouds for decades to alleviate drought, fight forest fires and even to disperse fog at airports.
However, research on the effects of cloud seeding on neighboring regions is mixed, and some evidence suggests it does not work very well even in the target area.
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