Rain shadow regions like Rayalseema, Telangana, Marathwada and north madhya Maharashtra will witness the cloud seeding experiment next monsoon season as part of the Cloud Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Experiment (CAIPEEX) of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM). However, the institute is still unsure whether the experiment will yield sufficient artificial rains, even as the first phase of the project that has cost about Rs 15 crore is set to wind up in the first week of October.

As the rains across the country have been scanty this year, the whole nation is looking at the results of this project as it can provide some relief next monsoon season if the rains play truant again. In the second phase of CAIPEEX next year, actual cloud seeding experiments are to be carried out. But when asked about its chances of success, director of IITM BN Goswami said it could not be predicted. In an interaction with the media at the Baramati airport on Thursday, the IITM scientists showcased the instrumented aircraft that carried out the experiments.

“Research is to be done on cloud seeding technologies and for that randomised experiments have to be carried out,” said Goswami. “There are various ways of cloud seeding like shooting flares containing salt to activate the clouds or creating a typical salt and then spraying it on clouds. However, which method will be effective is yet to be studied,” he said.

Based on the results of phase 1 experiment, a randomised experiment will be carried out in the monsoon and post monsoon seasons of 2010 and 2011. Programme manager of CAIPEEX JR Kulkarni too was non-committal when asked if the experiments for artificial rains to be carried out by IITM would lead to better results when compared to experiments carried out by other agencies this year in Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

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