Cloud Seeding Project in Kerala
Amidst the growing fears of drought, the Kerala government has revived the talk of cloud seeding in what is called god’s own country. The severe drought situation in Kerala has compelled its government to go for cloud seeding in order to tackle the situation prevailing in the state. After considering the successful results of cloud seeding in Maharashtra and Karnataka, now the Kerala government is thinking to experiment with it. Moreover, this sudden interest in seeding clouds to make rainfall, stemmed especially from the recent news of successful cloud-seeding operations carried out in the UAE.
What is cloud seeding?
It is a method of stimulating precipitation by ‘seeding’ clouds with chemicals like silver iodide, dry ice or potassium iodide. This revolutionary technology has helped in dealing with drought hit situation completely.
Generally when clouds become heavy and gain more moisture it is difficult for it hold water and hence, rain occurs. The process of cloud seeding accelerate this by injecting more chemical nuclei in the clouds and creation of more clouds. But this process only increases precipitation and there is no guarantee of rainfall. Moreover, it being fairly in its development stage, the technique has become a subject of debate.
Issues related to Cloud Seeding
Use of potentially harmful chemicals
Cloud seeding involves the use of chemicals such as silver iodide, dry ice or potassium iodide into the air, which means that it can potentially harm the environment, especially the fauna and flora. However, the complete effect of cloud seeding on the environment as a whole is unknown and depends on speculation as well as precedents. It is also suggested that the chronic ingestion of iodides might produce “iodism”, which may be manifested by skin rash, running nose, headache and irritation of the mucous membranes.
Affecting the weather in a negative way
Though it is believed to regulate the weather, by creating artificial rainfall, it is feared to permanently affect the climatic patterns that exist on the earth meaning that this artificial arrangement might interfere with the natural ecological system.
It can pose a negative risk for living organisms
Since the cloud seeding’s process requires the placement of chemicals into the air, it would obviously have undesirable impacts on the plants and animals.
Huge amounts of investment
Apart from the health impact it would have on the plants and animals, the cost of cloud seeding is another big concern, as it could be really costly to deliver chemicals to the sky and have them released into the air.
It can lead to flooding and other undesirable weather problems
Once the silver iodine and other chemicals are released into the atmosphere, it is beyond ones control that what type of weather it would form. It might rain too much leading to the problem of flooding. This would make it problematic for regions experiencing chronic water shortage, as they probably would have no system to deal with damage to be caused by flooding. Therefore, it is feared that rather than solving water-shortage problems, cloud seeding would just make it worse.
Applicability in India and viability in Kerala
India’s neighbour and arch rival China is enthusiast of this process and has even persuaded India to apply this process. This has resulted in use of this technology in various drought hit states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Maharashtra tried to run the cloud seeding process last year to reverse the drought’s effects but it can be said to be failed as most of the moist clouds withdrew till then and hence costing crores to the government without any desired results. The technology met similar fate in Karnataka as well.
As far as Kerala is concerned, the climatic features of the state is diverse. Western part of the state witness average of 115 inches of rainfall per year whereas the eastern part is usually dry and hence is hit by drought. This year too, Eastern Kerala is facing problem of drought and diminishing of water level and when monsoon is far, advance technologies can be adopted. But as moist clouds are required usually for cloud seeding, the dry east of Kerala has much less to offer to this technology. The climatic condition of Kerala combined with the patchy record of this technology, will not hold good news for the Keralites. This makes chance of cloud seeding to reverse effects of the drought in Kerala very meak.
Conclusion
Although technology has travelled leaps and bounds and traversed beyond nature’s imagination, it still cannot compete with what nature offers to us. Cloud seeding may seem feasible in various other countries but it has had a poor record as far as India is concerned. Cloud seeding still can’t replace what monsoon brings to the country especially Kerala which experience the southeast monsoon first in the country. Furthermore, in order to deal with drought in the state, there are other measures which can be adopted and are less harmful to environment and population such as desalination of the sea water as Kerala has a good amount of coastline and hence the western humid and coastal rich area can help eastern drought hit Kerala.
