In a significant push to tackle Delhi’s worsening winter air quality, an aircraft departed from Kanpur on Tuesday for the capital’s first cloud seeding trial, with operations planned over the Burari area in north-west Delhi. 

According to the capital’s Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the mission will proceed only if weather conditions become suitable: visibility must improve in Kanpur (from current ~2,000 metres to a target ~5,000 metres) and there must be sufficient cloud moisture. 
The trial, conducted in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, aims to disperse seeding agents (such as silver iodide) into clouds, with the hope of generating artificial rain that could help settle airborne pollutants in Delhi. 

If successful, the plane will stage the operation between 12:30 pm and 1 pm today, then land at Meerut airport. While the technique offers a novel tool in Delhi’s pollution-fighting arsenal, experts caution that cloud seeding depends heavily on favourable atmospheric conditions and is not a replacement for long-term emissions control.