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Mahesh

25/06/23 11:08 AM IST

IIT-K conducts artificial rain test through cloud seeding

In News
  • The Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) successfully conducted a test for artificial rain via cloud-seeding over a limited area on the sprawling campus.
Cloud Seeding
  • Cloud seeding is the process of spreading either dry ice or more commonly, silver iodide aerosols, into the upper part of clouds to try to stimulate the precipitation process and form rain.
  • Cloud seeding uses planes to spray clouds with chemicals to condense smaller particles into larger rain droplets.
  • Cloud seeding increases rainfall rates by approximately 10% to 30% per year and cloud seeding operations cost much less than the desalination process.
Methods
Hygroscopic Cloud Seeding
  • Disperses salts through flares or explosives in the lower portions of clouds. The salt grows in size as water joins with them.
Static Cloud Seeding
  • It involves spreading a chemical like silver iodide into clouds. The silver iodide provides a crystal around which moisture can condense.
  • The moisture is already present in the clouds, but silver iodide essentially makes rain clouds more effective at dispensing their water.
Dynamic Cloud Seeding
  • It aims to boost vertical air currents, which encourages more water to pass through the clouds, translating into more rain.
  • The process is considered more complex than static cloud seeding because it depends on a sequence of events working properly.
Applications
  • It creates rain, providing relief to drought-stricken areas.
  • Cloud seeding can help to maintain minimum summer flows of the rivers and dilute the impact of treated wastewater discharges from municipalities and industries.
  • During the winter the cloud seeding programme is used to increase the mountain snowpack so that additional runoff is received during the spring melt season
  • “Project Sky Water” of the U.S.A. in 1962 for weather modification through cloud seeding aimed at fog dispersal, hail suppression, and cyclone modification.
Source- India Today

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