JOIN USWhat's bringing the rain: cloud seeding or weather change?
True to the saying that success has many fathers, the intensified monsoon in Karnataka has two claimants: the state government gives credit to the ongoing cloud seeding while the Met department has attributed it to changed weather conditions.
At a review meeting on Saturday to discuss the success and future of cloud seeding, officials of the India Meteorological Department, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Cell (KSNDMC) and the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) had different takes on the rainfall.
IMD officials pointed to the formation of systems and said rainfall would intensify across Karnataka in the next three days. They requested the RDPR officials to stop cloud seeding for the time being.
Experiment to continue
RDPR officials, however, attributed the rainfall to cloud seeding and said the experiment would continue in Bengaluru Rural, Yadgir and Gadag districts as decided earlier.
L Ramesh Babu, director-in-charge, IMD, Bengaluru, said the bulletins and maps issued by the Central government clearly indicate heavy rainfall over northern, southern and coastal Karnataka. There is an east-west shear zone running along the 14-degree latitude which is bringing rain to coastal and interior Karnataka. There is also an upper air cyclonic circulation over the northwestern Bay of Bengal, off the northern Odisha coast, he added.
Babu further said the conditions were also favourable for the formation of a low-pressure area because of the upper air cyclonic circulation over the Bay of Bengal in the next 24 hours. Under the influence of all these factors, rainfall will intensify in interior Karnataka. Thus, there is no need for cloud seeding in these places, he added.
The IMD has also issued a heavy rainfall warning for Yadgir, Raichur, Kalaburgi, Haveri, Bidar and Belagavi districts, and thundershowers for Gadag for the next two days.
An official in the KSNDMC who did not wish to be named said efforts to convince RDPR officials failed as they were predetermined to go ahead with cloud seeding.
The government is spending Rs 35 crore on cloud seeding. The contract has been given to Hoysala Projects Pvt Ltd, which, in turn, has outsourced it to an American firm.
Speaking to DH, RDPR Minister H K Patil, under whose guidance cloud seeding is being undertaken, said he didn’t attend Saturday’s meeting and was thus unaware of what transpired there. But he asserted that nobody can claim credit for the rainfall. “It rained wherever we did cloud seeding. But the amount of rainfall depends on the clouds,” he said. He admitted that in some places, such as the outskirts of Bengaluru, it could be a double impact.
According to Patil, cloud seeding started five days ago and six sorties have been conducted so far.
The success rate has been 15% to 20%. Doppler weather radars are yet to be set up in Gadag and Yadgir for cloud seeding, he added.