High altitude laboratory to study formation of clouds

A new high altitude laboratory has been set up in India to study the formation of clouds and how they interact with the environment.

The lab, which is to be built at the popular hill station of Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra, is India’s first laboratory to study such activity, and is likely to produce some interesting results for physicists interested in this area of study.

India’s new research facility, called the High Altitude Cloud Physics Laboratory, has been operational for ten days now, functioning from an  IMD office in the hill station about 100 km from Pune. The research laboratory is around 1,500 metres above the mean sea level, and has been constructed to  give scientists an opportunity to study the clouds and study its interaction with the environment.

An official from the research project said: "The lab will be equipped with a large number of state-of-the-art equipment to measure all the micro-physical properties of the clouds and rain as well as environmental conditions such as the aerosols, winds, temperature, humidity at high temporal intervals.”

Mahabaleshwar has been chosen as a location because it offers a unique location for the experiment. The hill station receives nearly 500 millimetres of rains every year, in contrast to the surrounding plains, which are usually drought prone. Satara district, where the hill station is located, is experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent times, which is why the experiments could be of huge humanitarian significance.

There have been samples taken from aircraft fitted with observation instruments inside clouds to study how the aerosols in the atmosphere influence the cloud formation and bring rain. The scientists did report some limitations on the amount of samples taken, however, as the number of flights that could be carried out was limited.

Construction of the new laboratory is expected to start after the monsoons in October, and is likely to be completed by June of next year.

Posted by Ben Evans