HANOI: Rescuers raced to find more than a dozen people still missing on Saturday after a week of heavy flooding in Vietnam, where authorities said at least 55 people have died.&nbsp;Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding.&nbsp;Whole city blocks were inundated this week in coastal Nha Trang, while deadly landslides struck highland passes around the Da Lat tourist hub.&nbsp;At least 55 people have been killed across six provinces since Sunday, while the search continues for 13 others, the environment ministry said in a statement released on Saturday.&nbsp;Mountainous Dak Lak province was the hardest hit, with more than two dozen fatalities, it said.&nbsp;Rescuers were still plucking people from treetops and the roofs of homes as floodwaters receded there on Friday, state media reported.&nbsp;Multiple highways remained impassable Saturday and 300,000 people were without power, after a blackout that initially affected more than a million, the environment ministry added.&nbsp;Natural disasters have left 279 people dead or missing in Vietnam and caused more than $2 billion in damage between January and October, according to the national statistics office.&nbsp;The Southeast Asian nation is prone to heavy rain between June and September, but scientists have identified a pattern of human-driven climate change making extreme weather more frequent and destructive.

Asia

Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding.

Vietnam flooding death toll rises to 55

NEW DELHI: India&#39;s efforts to combat air pollution through cloud seeding in its sprawling capital, New Delhi, appear to have fallen flat, with scientists and activists questioning the effectiveness of the measure. Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain, which can wash pollutants from the air. Delhi authorities, working with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, began trials last week using a Cessna aircraft over parts of the city. But officials said the first trials produced very little rainfall because of thin cloud cover. &quot;This will never ever do the job, it&#39;s an illusion,&quot; said Bhavreen Kandhari, an environmental campaigner in Delhi. &quot;Only when we clean up sources of air pollution can we control it.&quot; The government has spent around $364,000 on the trials, according to local media reports. Each winter, thick smog chokes Delhi and its 30 million residents. Cold air traps emissions from farm fires, factories, and vehicles. Despite various interventions &mdash; such as vehicle restrictions, smog sucking towers, and mist-spraying trucks &mdash; the air quality ranks among the worst for a capital in the world. A day after the latest trial, levels of cancer-causing PM2.5 particles hit 323, more than 20 times the daily limits set by the World Health Organization. It will likely worsen further through the season. A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated that 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were linked to air pollution. There are also questions about the long-term impact of the chemicals sprayed themselves. While the US Environmental Protection Agency notes &quot;limited&quot; studies suggest silver iodide does not pose an environmental or health risk, it acknowledges the impact of more widespread use is &quot;not known.&quot;<h2 style="line-height: 2;"> </h2>Research processEnvironmental activists say even if cloud seeding produces rain, the benefits are short-lived. Climate scientist Daniele Visioni at Cornell University said it was unclear how efficient it was in heavily polluted conditions. &quot;It can&#39;t create rain where there is no moisture in the air, but it just &#39;forces&#39; some of the water to condense in one location rather than another,&quot; he told AFP. &quot;There is only one thing that can sensibly reduce pollution: avoiding the burning of fossil fuels.&quot; Virendra Sachdeva, from Delhi&#39;s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said it was too early to dismiss the cloud seeding experiment as a &quot;scientific failure.&quot; &quot;It is a part of the research process, and success is not always achieved in the first attempt,&quot; he told reporters. However, two atmospheric scientists at IIT Delhi called the cloud seeding plan &quot;another gimmick.&quot; &quot;It is a textbook case of science misapplied and ethics ignored,&quot; Shahzad Gani and Krishna Achutarao wrote in The Hindu newspaper. Mohan George, from the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said artificial rain was not the answer. &quot;The levels of pollution will come back almost immediately as rain stops,&quot; the scientist told AFP. When it does work, it will increase precipitation in one area &mdash; while potentially decreasing it for another. Costly spectacleCloud seeding, first developed in the 1940s, has been used in various countries to induce rain, clear fog, and reduce drought, but with mixed results. China used it during the 2008 Beijing Olympics in an attempt to control the weather. Gani and Achutarao said Delhi&#39;s pollution causes &mdash; unchecked emissions and seasonal crop burning &mdash; are well known. So too are the solutions &mdash; cleaner fuel, better waste management, and stricter enforcement of rules. &quot;Instead of reinforcing these priorities, parts of the scientific ecosystem &mdash; researchers, advisors, and institutions &mdash; are lending credibility to a costly spectacle that will do little to address the sources of the crisis,&quot; they said.

Climate

Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain, that can wash pollutants from the air.

Articles tagged with "environment"

Vietnam flooding death toll rises to 55

India's cloud seeding trials 'costly spectacle'