Maharashtra approves cloud seeding project

Maharashtra Government has approved a Rs.250 crore Cloud Seeding Programme to experiment whether cloud seeding produces sufficient rain. Seeding is a technique which involves spraying chemicals into clouds. Under this programme the weather scientists will fly Aeroplanes loaded with Silver Iodide and Dry ICE over clouds. 

• The programme is coordinated by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
• Under this programme, weather scientists using aircrafts will spray chemicals (silver iodide) over clouds clouds hovering above Solapur district, a rain shadow region of Western Ghats in the state. 
• This will be the first controlled experiment to quantify the extent to which clouds form water drops large enough to make rain. 
• In this experiment, scientists will fly two aircraft and spray silver iodide and dry ice on 100 clouds and compare them with 100 unseeded clouds. 
• Ground radar will be used to track the clouds and verify which ones contributed rain.