The Delhi regional government has foiled a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean up the world’s air.
The Bharatiya Chansta Party (BJP) has proposed the use of cloud cover as a way to control air pollution in Delhi since it was elected to govern the government this year.
Cloud seeding involves using airplanes or drones to add iodide particles, which have a structure similar to ice, to the clouds. The water droplets that drip on the particles, change the structure of the clouds and increase the chance of rain.
Months of unpredictable weather in the Indian capital have put the BJP’s cloud plans on hold. But with Delhi’s air quality days again falling into the dangerous range after the Diwali Festival, and a thick brown haze settling over the city, the government said the plan was finally rolled out.
Delhi Environment Ministry Singh Shaws, said that the first test flight – where seed flares were launched into the sky – was conducted on Thursday.
The city’s chief minister, Rekha Gupta, said: “If conditions remain favorable, Delhi will experience its first artificial rain on October 29.”
Experts who study cloud seeding say it’s not a panacea. This should produce more frequent and heavier rain than the clouds would otherwise release, but the effect is always less. The process also requires clouds, and they are often absent in Delhi during winter when pollution peaks. It also does not address the causes of pollutants.
Two professors at Delhi’s center for atmospheric sciences condemned the plan as a “gimmick”. “This is a textbook case of Science Misapplied and Ethics not dismissed,” said Shahzad Gani and Krishna Achutao, writing in the Hindu newspaper.
They compared the plans of “SMOG Towers” built in Delhi by the previous government, for billions of rupees, but found to be ineffective in air quality.
They also warned that there was little research into the long-term effects on repeated use of the chemicals used in cloud seeding, such as silver iodide or sodium chloride, on agriculture and human health.
“Oil solutions will not clean the air in Delhi or the rest of North India,” Gani and Achutarao said.
Delhi has been ranked as the most polluted city in the world for more than a decade. In 2024, pollution levels – caused by a deadly mix of emissions from the burning of crops, factories and heavy traffic, which caught the City when the air is cooler – rose.
During winter, levels of PM2.5 and PM 10 – the fine particulate matter that causes pollution – in the city regularly go far above those seen during the famous “airpocalypse” in Beijing in 2013, before the Chinese government took stringent initiatives to clean the air.