Typically associated with arid sand and air-conditioned megacities, parts of the Gulf region have recently been struck with a deluge of rain. On Tuesday, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) experienced a year and a half’s worth of rainfall in just a single day, bringing floods and chaos to the city.
The devastating downpour has led to wild speculation that it was caused or aggravated by cloud-seeding. This process typically involves spraying fine particles, like silver iodide, into the sky to provide water droplets with “nuclei” to converge around. This promotes the formation of ice crystals, which increases the odds of precipitation in the form of rain or snow.
It’s well-known that the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) frequently dabbles with cloud-seeding techniques to ease the nation’s water woes. However, there’s no evidence that cloud-seeing has anything to do with this week’s rainfall. Instead, meteorologists have noted that the event in Dubai is linked to wider weather patterns.
“These storms appear to be the result of a mesoscale convective system – a series of medium-sized thunderstorms caused by massive thunderclouds, formed as heat draws moisture up into the atmosphere. These can create large amounts of rain, and when they occur over a wide area and one after another, can lead to seriously heavy downpours. They can rapidly lead to surface water floods, as we have seen in places such as Dubai airport,” Professor Maarten Ambaum, a meteorologist at the University of Reading who has studied rainfall patterns in the Gulf region, said in a statement.
“There is no technology in existence that can create or even severely modify this kind of rainfall event. Furthermore, no cloud seeding operations have taken place in this area recently,” explained Ambaum.
The NCM has affirmed this view by claiming that no cloud seeding missions took place during this week’s downpour. In a statement to The National state-owned newspaper, they said: “The NCM didn’t conduct any seeding operations during this event.”
“One of the basic principles of cloud seeding is that you have to target clouds in its early stage before it rains. If you have a severe thunderstorm situation then it is too late to conduct any seeding operation.”
“We take the safety of our people, pilots, and aircraft very seriously. NCM doesn’t conduct cloud seeding operations during extreme weather events,” the NCM added.
Cloud seeding often becomes the target of conspiracy theories. In February this year, a pilot program to seed clouds in California was blamed for two major storms that hit southern parts of the state, triggering floods and landslides. However, officials pointed out there was no cloud seeding during the two major storms and, furthermore, that it’s not possible for cloud seeding to create storms themselves.
Source Link: Did Cloud Seeding Cause Dubai's Freak Floods? Experts Doubt It