The shortage of rainfall is supposed to be a major problem in India. Now to be honest, from what I have seen of these monsoons in Bombay, I ended up believing that because of excess and un-manageable rainfall Bombay had water logging. But, shortage is the problem that the municipal corporation of Bombay (BMC) is worried about.
I just read in the paper today that the BMC was planning to go to a "RAIN MAN" to make rain. Now, to a lot of people this might imply that the Rain man was going to perform some kind of dance or sacrifice to please the rain gods! But think again, the scientific method this Rain man will use is called Cloud seeding!
Now, I had heard of CLOUD OS, but Cloud seeding was news to me. So I did what any person of our generation with questions would do... I went online to find the answer. And to my surprise it wasn't just hog wash. Wikipedia had an article on it!
It is a method that is used to increase precipitation. It uses hygroscopic agents that cause the water to come together, and therefore cause precipitation. The science behind it seems alright, if water molecules come together, they become heavy, and eventually fall to the earth as rain/snow or some form of precipitation. Of course, if it does work one can never really say if it was the effect of the cloud seeding or mother nature. What if it was going to rain anyway?! The rain will certainly bring down the agents that were sent up!
However from what I read, people have used this method at times to reduce precipitation rather than increase it. The case in point is China, where they used this method in the hope that there would be no rain during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Also Vladimir Putin had used this method to try to make sure it didn't rain during a G8 Summit...but it ended up pouring!
I guess you can't play around with nature. I just hope that in our attempt to increase precipitation, we don't end up reducing it! Instead maybe find a way to perform Rainwater tapping, it will be the stone that takes out two birds.
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