Paper: GS – III, Subject: Environment and Ecology, Topic: Pollution, Issue: Cloud Seeding in Delhi.
Context:
Delhi’s severe air pollution, worsened each winter by multiple sources like vehicles, industries, and stubble burning, poses a serious health crisis.
Key Takeaways:
- Cloud seeding is suggested as a quick remedy but is scientifically ineffective for addressing the pollution’s root causes and provides only temporary, uncertain relief.
Understanding Cloud Seeding:
What is Artificial Rain?
- Artificial rain, also known as cloud seeding, is a weather modification technique aimed at enhancing precipitation (generate artificial rain) from clouds.
- Method: Uses chemicals like silver iodide, potassium iodide, and dry ice, which are dispersed into the sky via aeroplanes and helicopters.
- These chemicals attract water vapour (acting as nuclei), helping form rain clouds.
- Types: Hygroscopic Cloud Seeding (accelerates the merging of droplets in liquid clouds) and Glaciogenic Cloud Seeding (induces ice formation in super cooled clouds).
- Limitation: It requires the presence of existing clouds with sufficient moisture; it cannot create rain in dry or cloudless conditions.
Why Delhi’s Air is Fouler in Winter:
- Post-monsoon stagnation: After the monsoon withdraws, winds weaken, and high-pressure systems dominate, leading to poor dispersion of pollutants.
- Temperature inversion: Cooler air near the surface traps pollutants below a layer of warmer air.
- Low humidity: The winter atmosphere is too dry and stable to support significant cloud formation.
- Western disturbances: Occasional rainfall during winter comes mainly from Mediterranean-origin systems, not from local clouds making cloud seeding infeasible most of the time.
Risks and Ethical Issues of Cloud Seeding Vs Root Solutions:
The ethical duty is to pursue evidence-based, long-term solutions that tackle pollution at its source, requiring courage to enforce tough but sustainable policies for clean air.
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