No Rain After Delhi’s Cloud Seeding Attempt— Here’s What Happened

The Delhi government has begun cloud seeding trials in collaboration with IIT Kanpur to induce artificial rain and curb the city’s severe smog, under a ₹3 crore MoU signed in September for five experimental runs.

On October 28, two sorties were carried out over Burari, North Karol Bagh, Mayur Vihar, and Badli using a Cessna aircraft equipped with salt-based and silver iodide flares. The first flight concluded by 2 p.m., and the second, flown from Meerut, wrapped up by 5 p.m

However, the attempt yielded no rainfall. IIT Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal told NDTV “We did two sorties and fired around 14 flares, but there hasn’t been any rain so far. So, in that sense, it is not completely successful, adding that a third round of trials is likely to be conducted on Wednesday.

A government report later cited the India Meteorological Department’s forecast, noting that the moisture content in the atmosphere was only 10–15 percent—too low for successful seeding.

Despite the lack of rain, officials observed a marginal reduction in pollution levels. According to PTI, PM2.5 levels fell from around 230 to 206, while PM10 dropped from 207 to 163 in areas such as Mayur Vihar, Karol Bagh, and Burari.

India earlier tested cloud seeding in Solapur, Maharashtra (2018–19), achieving an 18% rise in rainfall after two years of trials. “It’s not easy to do cloud seeding because there’s inherent variability in each cloud. We did over 200 flights and trials before arriving at any conclusive results.” scientist Thara Prabhakaran, who worked on the project, told ThePrint.

While the ruling party hailed Delhi’s initiative as a “scientific step to tackle pollution,” critics questioned whether the ₹3 crore expenditure was justified given the limited results.