BENGALURU: Following initial hiccups, the much-touted cloud seeding project of the State took off at Jakkur Airfield on Monday. The project - named Varshadhare - will be fully operational from Wednesday and taken up for a period of 60 days.On Monday, though the aircraft used for seeding was set to take off at around 2.45 pm, it could only fly at around 5 pm as they did not receive permission in time from Air Traffic Control at Yelahanka Air Force Base. Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) H K Patil, Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Science and Technology Minister M R Seetharam were the three who flew in the first cloud seeding sortie.
Speaking to Express, Prakash Kumar, Chief Engineer, RDPR said that on Monday there was only a small demonstration on the project.“On Tuesday, RADARs will be set up at three places in the State: Bengaluru, Gadag and Shorapur in Yadgir district. The project will be fully operational from Wednesday,” he said.
During the launch of the project, H K Patil said that though they wanted to take up the project 10 days ago, it was delayed due to various reasons, including the implementation of Goods and Services Tax. Due to GST, the RADAR systems were stuck with the customs at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru.
Kumar said that the aircraft, BQ-100 Beechcraft, will fly from Bengaluru and Hubballi during the course of the project. Using the RADARs, they will be able to identify areas where the conditions will be conducive for cloud-seeding. “We will generally take a decision about two to three hours before the aircraft is launched. Movement of clouds will be tracked for about 10-11 hours in advance,” he added.
To a question, he said that cloud-seeding has to be done between 1 pm and 4 pm for optimal results. However, if cloud formation occurs later during the day, seeding can be done a bit later.Krishna Byre Gowda said that though they had plans to take up the project during the previous year, they missed the chance to do so. Stating that the State was suffering losses to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore due to drought, employing methods such as cloud-seeding was a scientific way to tackle the crisis.
How does it work?
Cloud-seeding is a technique employed to increase precipitation in clouds. Experts say precipitation in clouds has been affected recently due to increase in particulate matter in the atmosphere, among other factors.
Cloud-seeding aims at catalysing the process of precipitation, so that rainfall could be increased by 15-20 per cent in drought-affected areas of the State
Among the problems for successful precipitation in rain-bearing clouds are that water droplets formed in the clouds are much smaller. Droplets formed in the clouds are blown away in the wind even before they have the time to reach earth. Moreover, small droplets do not have the energy to collide and form large droplets that can come down as rain.
By introducing impurities such as Silver Iodide, Potassium Chloride and others, the objective is to ensure that the size of the droplets is large enough to fall down as rain.
They failed to catch clouds on Day-1
Cloud-seeding was done in a 20 square kilometre area over Ramanagar district. The impact of the first day of activities can only be assessed on Tuesday. Sources said due to the delay in take-off, clouds could not be caught on time. The success of the first day of seeding may be lower than expected.