In an effort to manage intense rainfall that has been disrupting the construction of its future capital, Indonesia is implementing cloud seeding techniques around the site of Nusantara, a weather agency official reported on Friday.
Scheduled to start operations on August 17, Nusantara will replace Jakarta as Indonesia's capital, addressing issues such as severe traffic congestion and subsidence.
However, ongoing daily rains have significantly hampered construction efforts. This led contractors to request a weather modification intervention from Indonesia's Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG).
Tri Handoko Seto, a senior BMKG official, explained that the contractors sought a weather modification operation to divert, reduce, or eliminate the persistent rainfall. Cloud seeding, which involves introducing particles or chemicals into clouds to manipulate weather patterns, has become a globally popular method to induce rain and combat drought, although it cannot generate weather or induce rainfall on the scale seen in regions like Germany and the United States.
The cloud seeding operations around Nusantara commenced last week and are expected to conclude on Sunday, after which an evaluation will determine if further operations are necessary. This marks the first instance of cloud seeding being used to mitigate rainfall at the planned city’s site.
Indonesia frequently experiences flooding and landslides during its six-month rainy season, with the BMKG predicting that heavy rains will persist around Nusantara until August. The Indonesian government plans for Nusantara to host 1.9 million residents by 2045, aiming to stimulate human and industrial activity in Borneo's heart.
However, environmentalists have raised concerns that developing the new capital could accelerate deforestation in one of the world's largest tropical rainforests. Despite these concerns, the government is proceeding with plans to relocate thousands of civil servants to Nusantara in September, although construction delays have already pushed back the timeline by several months.