Beware, Pakistan may hijack India’s rains this winter

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has successfully completed the first phase of artificial rain experiments in Thar, Cholistan and Khuzdar in the current monsoon season. A total of 24 cloud-seeding experiments were conducted during the last eight weeks, out of which 15 have been declared successful.

Interestingly, the exercise is being jointly conducted by the Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence and the weather department as assigned by the country’s Chief Executive, General Pervez Musharraf.

For accomplishing the task, PMD has availed the services of Army Aviation and Plant Protection Department aircraft whereas the Army Signals are providing the communication facilities to operational centres of PMD. The department has set up three regional centers, one each in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore, for the experiments with its nodal set-up in Islamabad.

For India, the problem is not with the ongoing cloud-seeding experiments which would continue till mid-September, but the second phase which would start in December. “This is because during the south-west monsoon season the clouds effecting rainfall move from India towards Pakistan. So, by the time they enter Pakistan, they have already delivered good rainfall in Indian territory,” said a senior meteorologist from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

“However, during winters, the flow of rain clouds is reverse: from Pakistan to northern India. Winter rains play a very significant role in the agricultural prospects of the northern region. The areas which are benefited include the agriculture-rich Punjab, Haryana, and parts of Uttar Pradesh besides Delhi,” he added.

Winter rains hold great significance for India as well as Pakistan. Like India, Pakistan also possesses diversified climatic conditions ranging from hyper arid to humid. Some areas receive a meagre amount of rainfall during the year insufficient to sustain agriculture and to meet civic water requirement. Frequent droughts are the common feature of these areas.

Major drought-prone areas are located in Baluchistan, Sindh, North West Frontier Province and Punjab. It is here that majority of the cloud-seeding experiments are being carried out right now and will be conducted in the second phase as well.

Enthused by the success rate of its ongoing experiments, PMD will conduct the second phase from December to March on winter clouds. The winter experiments will be conducted for the enhancement of rainfall as well as snowfall.

According to details made available by the PMD, the first experiment was conducted in Fatehjang on June 21, and the area received light rain one hour after the seeding. On July 1, two operations were conducted over the Thar desert and rain started three hours after the cloud-seeding. It continued intermittently for a few hours, the department has claimed.

On the other hand officials at Mausam Bhavan said that similar experiments were also conducted in India in the late Sixties and early Seventies. However, they met with little success. They said that there was no cause of alarm over the Pakistani experiments as it is a very localised phenomenon which has little bearing over the rainfall pattern of a large region.

What’s cloud-seeding?

cloud-seeding is a process in which a chemical — generally silver iodide — is sprayed on the monsoon clouds. The chemical acts as condensation material and effects precipitation of clouds — or in other words results in formation of water drops and subsequently effects rainfall.

The process is considered environmentally safe and is practised in a number of countries to enhance crop productivity. South Africa, USA, Thailand, Malaysia, China, some Arab countries and Israel are using cloud-seeding methods to induce artificial rain.