India’s capital New Delhi is the city with the highest air pollution in the world. As serious as it is, air levels in New Delhi have deteriorated to such an extent that sometimes the entire city is shrouded in a thick fog. As the air quality in New Delhi deteriorates, it is a nornal situation that many daily activities are suspended.
There the authorities of the city take steps to close schools and offices and limit the traffic in the city. But air pollution in the city of New Delhi, which has the same population as the entire population of Sri Lanka, cannot be stopped simply by controlling the driving of vehicles.
Air pollution in New Delhi usually increases with the arrival of winter. The reason for this is that people in the areas near New Delhi use a lot of firewood for heating during the winter season. The smoke released from this also comes to the city of New Delhi and with its geographical location, the smoke clouds cannot travel out of the city.
Last week, as New Delhi was covered with toxic gases, the New Delhi Environment Minister said that they are working to reduce air pollution by creating artificial rain.
However, carrying out this work as originally planned has become a challenge in some ways. The reason for this is that to create artificial rains over the city of New Delhi, permission has to be obtained from the Supreme Court of India and permission from the Central Government Ministries.
But if these permits can be obtained, Indian experts say that by the end of this month, it will be possible to wet the skies of New Delhi and thereby control the toxic gases that have covered the city.
Artificial precipitation is a technique that accelerates the condensation of moisture in clouds to produce rain. It is done by spraying particles like iridium or chloride on the clouds. It is by upscattering from the groud or using aircrafts.
The salt granules act as ice nucleation particles, creating the potential for ice crystals to form in clouds. Then the moisture in the clouds is drawn to these ice crystals and condenses. It causes rain. However, this process does not always work as expected. Scientists point out that the atmospheric conditions must be exactly right and the air quality must be maintained in order to produce these artificial rains.
The project plan for this facility is the Indian Institute of Technology or IIT, Kanpur, one of India’s top engineering colleges. According to the plan presented by them, this project is going to be done in two phases.
It is expected to cover about three hundred square kilometers under the first phase. Scientists have suggested that the most suitable weather conditions for this will be on the 20th and 21st of this month, so they have indicated that this process should be done during those two days.
Scientist Manindra Agrawal, who is leading the project, told Reuters news agency that although not enough clouds are expected to completely cover Delhi on the relevant days, there may be clouds covering several kilometres.
The rationale behind this entire program is the assumption that this increase will help remove particulates from the atmosphere and thereby enable people in New Delhi to live their normal life style.
However, in this regard, some scientists say that there is not enough test data to confirm that there is a possibility of improving air quality through artificial rain. Accordingly, it cannot be expected that New Delhi will be able to end air pollution in the near future.
