India conducts cloud-seeding trial to clear New Delhi's smog

Indian authorities on Tuesday carried out a cloud-seeding experiment over smog-choked New Delhi in an attempt to induce rainfall and clear the city’s toxic air, which has sparked anger among residents

Indian authorities on Tuesday carried out a cloud-seeding experiment over smog-choked New Delhi in an attempt to induce rainfall and clear the city’s toxic air, which has sparked anger among residents.

A plane sprayed chemicals into clouds over some areas of the Indian capital to encourage rain and wash pollutants from the air, which remained in the “very poor” category, according to air quality monitors.

Cloud seeding — a weather modification method that releases chemicals into clouds to trigger rain — has been used in drought-prone regions, such as the western United States and the United Arab Emirates, though experts say its effectiveness remains uncertain.

Delhi Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that the trial was done in collaboration with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, with more planned in the coming days. He said that authorities were expecting a brief spell of rainfall in some parts of the city in the following hours.

New Delhi and its surrounding region, home to more than 30 million people, routinely rank among the world’s most polluted. India has six of the 10 most polluted cities globally, and New Delhi is the most polluted capital, according to a report from Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir earlier this year.