Kerala government likely to give cloud seeding a try in April
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state government will try its hand at rain-making ahead of the 2018 southwest monsoon months, possibly by the end of April. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced the plans for a cloud seeding experiment in March 2017, a year which saw Kerala stumbling through a drought. The government will not use aircraft to disperse cloud seeding chemicals on the first attempt, senior government officers said. Instead, chemical-bearing flares will be fired from the ground to ‘seed’ rain clouds and stimulate precipitation.
A number of locations, including Kochu Pampa, have been identified for the experiment, said M Chandra Dathan, the scientific advisor to the Chief Minister and former director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC).
“You need rain clouds for the experiment. It is not possible without them. We wanted to conduct the experiment in October last year. But the state received copious rainfall at the time and we put off the experiment. Now we plan to do it by the end of April,” Dathan said.
Cloud seeding is a method of stimulating rainfall by ‘seeding’ clouds with chemicals such as silver iodide, dry ice or potassium iodide. In May 2017, the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) was appointed as the implementation agency for the ambitious rain-making project. The technical aspects were to be handled by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment.
The government has identified a private cloud seeding agency for conducting the experiment, officers said. Interestingly, KSEB had toyed with the idea of artificial rain to fill its depleted hydel reservoirs some years ago but had discarded it as unviable. Compared to 2017, the state is in a much better position this year vis a vis hydropower generation.
As on January 14, the hydel reservoirs had enough water to generate 2,895.45 million units (MU). Last year, on the same day the storage was enough to generate just 1,857 MU.