Above, this video from 2 months ago profiled the United Arab Emirate’s cloud seeding program, and some successes in creating rainfall in desert areas, as part of a “greening desert” effort.
Ironically, Dubai and nearby areas were subject to an off the chart rain event this week, which the climate denial community attributed to the cloud seeding program, something this Reuters report refutes.
“UAE’s meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm”.
In the UAE, a record 254 millimetres (10 inches) of rainfall was recorded in Al Ain, a city bordering Oman. It was the largest ever in a 24-hour period since records started in 1949.
DID CLOUD SEEDING CAUSE THE STORM?
Rainfall is rare in the UAE and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, that is typically known for its dry desert climate. Summer air temperatures can soar above 50 degrees Celsius.
But the UAE and Oman also lack drainage systems to cope with heavy rains and submerged roads are not uncommon during rainfall.
Following Tuesday’s events, questions were raised whether cloud seeding, a process that the UAE frequently conducts, could have caused the heavy rains.
Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern.
The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation.
But the UAE’s meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm.
WHAT ABOUT ClIMATE CHANGE?
The huge rainfall was instead likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, experts say.
A low pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure ‘squeeze’ on the air, according to Esraa Alnaqbi, a senior forecaster at the UAE government’s National Centre of Meteorology.
That squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer temperatures at ground level and colder temperatures higher up, created the conditions for the powerful thunderstorm, she said.
The “abnormal phenomenon” was not unexpected in April as when the season changes the pressure changes rapidly, she said, adding that climate change also likely contributed to the storm.
Climate scientists say that rising global temperatures, caused by human-led climate change, is leading to more extreme weather events around the world, including intense rainfall.
“Rainfall from thunderstorms, like the ones seen in UAE in recent days, sees a particular strong increase with warming. This is because convection, which is the strong updraft in thunderstorms, strengthens in a warmer world,” said Dim Coumou, a professor in climate extremes at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
CAN’T CREATE CLOUDS FROM NOTHING
Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said rainfall was becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. It was misleading to talk about cloud seeding as the cause of the heavy rainfall, she said.
“Cloud seeding can’t create clouds from nothing. It encourages water that is already in the sky to condense faster and drop water in certain places. So first, you need moisture. Without it, there’d be no clouds,” she said.
Global warming has resulted in “extraordinarily” warm water in the seas around Dubai, where there is also very warm air above, said Mark Howden, Director at the Australian National University’s Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions.
“This increases both potential evaporation rates and the capacity of the atmosphere to hold that water, allowing bigger dumps of rainfall such as what we have just seen in Dubai.”
This is a bit annoying, I lived in that part of world for a goodly part of my working life, and saw some rain, some years (many years completely dry) and even minor flooding and inconvenience, but nothing anywhere that scale or intensity (people died in neighboring Oman). The official U.A.E body (Met Office) states clearly no cloud seeding was performed at all. Yet most headlines are including “Cloud Seeding” in there eye-catcher. Many people are time stretched and just catch the headline, and think it was all caused by cloud seeding. Blame anything but climate change and physics, will we ever address this problem??? Does anybody understand the meaning of “Dangerous Climate Change”, certainly not Judy Curry.