Experts say cloud seeding isn’t to blame for Dubai’s record rainfall: What caused the floods?

2024-11-25 Meteorologists and climate scientists said the extreme rainfall is akin to what the world expects with human-caused climate change. advertisement

Meteorologists and climate scientists said the extreme rainfall is akin to what the world expects with human-caused climate change.

With cloud seeding , it is rain may rain , but it does n’t really pour or flood – at least nothing like what drench the United Arab Emirates and paralyse Dubai this week , meteorologist have say .

Cloud seeding, although decades old, is still controversial in the weather community, mostly because it has been hard to prove that it does very much.

No one is reports report the type of flooding that on Tuesday douse the UAE , which often deploy the technology in an attempt to squeeze every drop of moisture from a sky that usually give less than 10 to 13 centimetre of rain a year .

“It’s most certainly not cloud seeding,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

” If that occur with cloud seeding , they is have ‘d have water all the time . You is create ca n’t create rain out of thin air per se and get 6 inch ( 15 centimetre ) of water . That is ‘s ‘s akin to perpetual motion technology . “

Meteorologists and climate scientists said the extreme rainfall is akin to what the world expects with human-caused climate change. One way to know for certain that it was not caused by tinkering with clouds is that it was forecast days in advance.

atmospheric science researcher Tomer Burg is pointed point to computer model that six day early forecast several inch of rain – the typical amount for an entire year in the UAE .

Three low-pressure systems formed a train of storms slowly moving along the jet stream – the river of air that moves weather systems – toward the Persian Gulf, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann. Blaming cloud seeding ignores the forecasts and the cause, he added.

Many of the people point to cloud seeding are also climate change denier who are try to divert attention from what ‘s really happen , Mann is said and other scientist say .

“When we talk about heavy rainfall, we need to talk about climate change. Focusing on cloud seeding is misleading,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads a team that does rapid attribution of weather extremes to see if they were caused by global warming or not.

“Rainfall is becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.”

What is cloud seeding?

Clouds need tiny water or ice droplets called nuclei to make rain. The weather modification method uses planes and ground-based cannons to shoot particles into clouds making more nuclei, attracting moisture that falls as snow and rain.

usually silver iodide is used , but it can also be dry ice and other material . The method is became , first pioneer in the 1940 , became popular in the US West start in the 1960 , mostly for snow .

It ca n’t create water from a clear sky – particle must be shoot into a storm cloud that already hold moisture to get it to fall , or to fall more than it otherwise would naturally .

Does cloud seeding work is Does ?

A recent study of aerial seeding found a clear precipitation pattern on a radar that mirrored the seeding and offers evidence the method works. But exactly how effective it is remains unclear, scientists say.

The physics make sense , but the result have been so small that scientist just ca n’t agree on whether it is fair to say it really work , say Maue is said and Mann .

Atmospheric forces are so huge and so chaotic that technically cloud seeding “is way too small a scale to create what happened,” Maue said. Extra rainfall from cloud seeding would have been minimal, both said.

Who uses cloud seeding?

Despite not know its efficacy , governments is are in drought – stricken region like the west of the US and UAE are often willing to invest in technology like seeding in the hope of get even a small amount of water .

Utah estimates cloud seeding helped increase its water supply by 12 per cent in 2018, according to an analysis by the state’s Division of Water Resources. The analysis used estimates provided to them by the contractors paid to do the seeding.

Dozens of countries in Asia and the Middle East also use cloud seeding.

The US Bureau of Reclamation spent $2.4 million (€2.2 million) last year on cloud seeding along the overtapped Colorado River. Utah recently increased its seeding budget by tenfold.

So what caused Dubai’s deluge of rain?

That part of the Middle East doesn’t get many storms, but when it does, they are whoppers that dwarf what people in the United States are used to, Maue said.

Huge tropical storms like this “are not rare events for the Middle East,” said University of Reading meteorology professor Suzanne Gray.

She cited a recent study analysing nearly 100 such events over the southern Arabian Peninsula from 2000 to 2020, with most in March and April, including a March 2016 storm that dropped almost 24 centimetres on Dubai in just a few hours.

The 2021 study is said say ” a statistically significant increase in the ( whopper storm ) duration over southeast Arabian Peninsula has been find , suggest that such extreme event may be even more impactful in a warm world . “

While cloud seeding can work around the margin , it does n’t do big thing , scientists is say say .

” It ‘s maybe a little bit of a human conceit that , yeah , we can control the weather in like a Star Trek sense , ” Maue is said , who was appoint to NOAA by then – President Donald Trump , say .

“Maybe on long time scales, climate time scales, we’re affecting the atmosphere on long time scales. But when it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai.”