Does cloud seeding have anything to do with the Dubai floods?

This week in Dubai experienced historical flood. In just one day, Tuesday, it rained the equivalent of precipitation is 1.5 years. Without a doubt, this was a unique event that caused many people to wonder about the possibility that it was deliberately or accidentally caused by a phenomenon known as cloud seeding

United Arab Emirates It is a very dry country where desalination plants usually have to be used to provide enough water for its inhabitants. Therefore, in recent years, scientists from their National Meteorological Center They also introduced cloud seeding to increase the number of rainy days.

This is a process that involves spraying aerosols into the atmosphere with substances such as silver iodide, which become the nuclei of cloud formation. And the clouds They are not made of pure water.

There must be particles in the atmosphere to which drops of water rising from the surface of the Earth stick. The more particles, the easier it is for clouds to form heavy enough to rain. This should not be confused with the chemtrail myth. Among other things, because they are supposed to prevent rain, and not vice versa. So, could cloud seeding be the cause of the massive floods in Dubai? Everything points to no. In fact, it seems that the biggest culprit would be changing of the climate. It’s no surprise to anyone.

Cloud seeding in the spotlight

Although there are those who claim to have seen some planes National Meteorological Center of the Emirates Days before the Dubai floods, the organization itself insisted it had nothing to do with it. We might think they want to wash their hands, but experts around the world agree that this is virtually impossible.

These torrential rains were part of KhadirA storm originated in Oman. Cloud seeding can lead to rain. In fact, this is the main motivation of those who do it. But this process cannot produce lightning or other characteristic features of a storm like Khadir.

Martin Ambaum, a meteorologist at the University of Reading, said in a statement that “these storms appear to be the result of a mesoscale convective system.” This means that a series of medium thunderstorms due to massive electrical clouds formed when heat draws moisture into the atmosphere.” Such events usually cause heavy downpours like the one recorded in Dubai.

For his part, the climatologist Friederike Otto told AFP that “it is very likely that storm conditions worsened due to global warming“.

Plus, you can’t blame cloud seeding for this. This storm had already been predicted earlier, as explained BBC Meteorologist Matt Taylor. “Before this event, computer models were already predicting more rainfall in just 24 hours than a year.”

Climate change as the real culprit

Most meteorologists surveyed around the world agree that such events will become more often as climate change progresses. We usually think of it as a mixture of heat and drought. But in reality, global warming is leading to extreme weather events, including heavy rainfalls like the one that caused flooding in Dubai.

Here we have another reason combating climate change. Instead of blaming cloud seeding, we should raise awareness of the reality of what is about to happen and take all possible measures to prevent it.