BPPT Has Modified The Weather So That It Will Rain Before Arriving In Jabodetabek

JAKARTA - The Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) deployed two aircraft to anticipate flooding due to extreme weather that occurred in Jabodetabek, since Tuesday, December 31 yesterday. You do this by modifying rain clouds through Weather Modification Technology (TMC).

BPPT will use TMC to accelerate the decrease in rain, before it reaches the Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi (Jabodetabek) areas so as to reduce rainfall in these areas in order to prevent flooding. The plan is that BPPT will send rain around the Sunda Strait or Lampung.

According to Tri Handoko Seto, Head of the BPPT Weather Modification Technology Center, his party will drop rain faster than the clouds moving towards Java Island. Especially the clouds that come from the western part of Sumatra Island.

This effort is believed to be able to minimize rainfall that occurs in the Jabodetabek area. His party is targeting, at least 30 to 50 percent of rainfall in the Jabodetabek area can be reduced.

"So our task is to drop rain clouds before reaching the Jabodetabek area. So that the rainfall will decrease," said Seto, as quoted by era.id.

Seto said that currently his party had made preparations to conduct TMC by preparing two aircraft types Casa and CN 295 belonging to the Indonesian Air Force. "Some of the clouds will be made artificial rain, weather modification will be carried out, so that at the peak, the number of clouds that will become rain is somewhat reduced," he added.

His team has also prepared 22 tons of seed material (salt) for sowing hygroscopic substances such as table salt (NaCl) and CaCl2 in cloud seeds that have the potential to rain.

The salts should be fine grains with a diameter of 10-50 microns. Later, the salt will form water vapor points. Artificial rain is very much influenced by how much and how little clouds are above the area that needs rain.

The more clouds, the more stimulation that can be given. This also affects the rainfall that will fall.