Did artificial rainfall really cause record rainfall and flooding in Dubai?

Meteorologists say through cloud seeding, there could be rain, but not actual downpours or flooding — at least not like the one that drenched the United Arab Emirates and brought Dubai to a standstill this week.

Although cloud seeding has been around for decades, it is still controversial In the weather world, mainly because it’s hard to prove that it does much good.

No one reported the type of flooding The United Arab Emirates was poured out on Tuesday, The company regularly deploys the technology in an attempt to squeeze every last drop from a sky that receives less than 10 to 13 centimeters of rain per year.

“This is definitely not artificial rainfall,” said Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist and former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If that happens with cloud seeding, then they’ll always have water. You can’t create rain out of thin air and get 6 inches (15 centimeters) of water. It’s similar to perpetual motion technology.”

Meteorologists and climate scientists say extreme rainfall Similar to what the world expects from human-caused climate change. One way to know for sure that this wasn’t caused by cloud patching is that it was predicted several days in advance.

Atmospheric science researcher Tomer Berg noted that computer models six days ago predicted several inches of rain – typical for the UAE throughout the year.

Three low-pressure systems formed a string of storms that slowly moved into the Persian Gulf along the jet stream, the river of air that drives weather systems, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He added that blaming artificial rain ignores predictions and causes.

Many people who point to cloud seeding also climate change deniers Mann and other scientists say they are trying to divert attention from what is actually happening.

“When we talk about heavy rainfall, we need to talk about climate change. Focusing on artificial rainfall is misleading,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who leads a team responsible for the Rapid attribution of extreme weather events to understand whether they are caused by global warming.

“As the climate warms, rainfall becomes heavier around the world because the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.”

What is cloud seeding?

Clouds require tiny water or ice droplets called atomic nuclei to produce rain. Weather modification methods use aircraft and ground-based cannons to launch particles into clouds that form more nuclei and attract moisture that falls into the clouds. Snow and rain.

Typically silver iodide is used, but materials such as dry ice can also be used. This method was first pioneered in the 1940s and became popular in the western United States in the 1960s, primarily for snow.

It cannot produce water from a clear sky—particles would have to be fired into storm clouds that already contain moisture for them to fall, or fall more than they would naturally.

Does cloud seeding work?

A recent aerial seeding study found clear precipitation patterns on radar that reflected seeding and provided evidence that the method works. But scientists say its specific effects remain unclear.

The physics made sense, Moir and Mann said, but the results were so small that scientists couldn’t agree on whether it was fair to say it actually worked.

Mauer said the atmospheric forces were so large and chaotic that, technically, cloud seeding was “too small a scale to have caused what happened.” Both said the additional rainfall from artificial rain would be negligible.

Who uses cloud seeding?

Although its efficacy is unknown, governments arid areas Countries like the western United States and the United Arab Emirates are often willing to invest in technologies such as seeding in order to obtain even small amounts of water.

Utah estimates that cloud seeding helped increase the state’s water supply by 12 percent in 2018, according to an analysis by the state’s water resources department. The analysis used estimates provided to them by contractors who paid to seed.

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

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spent $2.4 million ($2.2 million) last year to create artificial rainfall along the overused Colorado River. Utah recently increased its seed budget tenfold.

So what exactly caused the heavy rain in Dubai?

That part of the Middle East doesn’t get many storms, Mauer said, but when they do, they dwarf what Americans are used to.

Suzanne Gray, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, said huge tropical storms like this were “not unusual for the Middle East”.

She cited a recent study that analyzed nearly 100 such events in the southern Arabian Peninsula between 2000 and 2020, with most occurring in March and April, including a storm in March 2016, Rainfall fell by nearly 24 centimeters. Dubai In just a few hours.

“Statistically significant increases in the duration of (giant storms) in the southeastern Arabian Peninsula suggest that such extreme events may have a greater impact in a warming world,” the 2021 study said.

Scientists say that while cloud seeding can play a role, it won’t make a big difference.

“It may be a bit of human conceit that, yes, we can control the weather like in Star Wars,” said Mauer, who was appointed administrator of NOAA by then-President Donald Trump.

“Perhaps on long-term scales, on climate time scales, we are influencing the atmosphere on long-term scales. But in terms of controlling individual heavy rains, we are far from there. If we have the ability to do that , I think we can solve a more difficult problem than making a shower in Dubai.