Delhi Air Pollution: ‘Artificial Rain’ Solution to Air Quality Crisis, Temporary Relief Pre-Diwali

10 Nov, 2023 Author: Deepanshi

Delhi Air Pollution: Observing the past recent days, the air quality of Delhi has been marked as toxic, and hazardous, and the city has been called a ‘gas chamber.’ the AQI in several areas of Delhi-NCR has “very poor” and “severe” AQI. The crisis also engulfed the neighboring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Artificial Rain Project

As a response to tame the situation some notch, 'Artificial Rain' was proposed by the minds at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The project aims to reduce the levels of air pollution in the national capital and has been a work in progress since 2018.

According to the Economic Times, the recent trial of the project was conducted in July. the project has been ongoing with all the necessary permissions from authorities including, the director general of civil aviation to conduct cloud seeding.

The project is carried out under the guidance of Manindra Agarwal, a professor at IIT Kanpur. He explained that artificial rain could temporarily relieve up to one week in Delhi and NCR, suffering from poor air quality.

Cloud Seeding

Cloud seeding is an artificial method to increase rainfall by injecting salts, called the ‘seeds’ to improve the cloud’s ability to produce rain.

Its purposes:

Increase Precipitation
Clearing Fog
Fight forest fire
Suppressing hail
Divert rainfall

Delhi has been experiencing thick smog in the city and the regions on its periphery, due to stubble burning, vehicle emission, and industrial pollution among other causes. Responding to the dire situation many effective measures have been put in place.