Dubai Flash Floods Present Downsides of Controlling the Climate

• The United Arab Emirates skilled torrential rainfall and extreme flash floods on Tuesday.
• The flooding was worsened by to UAE’s cloud seeding observe to deal with water shortage.
• The climate modification technique includes getting clouds to drop extra precipitation.

Torrential rainfall pummeled the United Arab Emirates this week, leading to flash floods which have brought about air journey delays, closed faculties, and deluged properties.

Dubai Worldwide Airport — just lately named the most luxurious airport on this planet — was diverting planes as of Tuesday night till the climate situations improved, in line with a assertion.

Movies on social media appeared to point out a closely flooded tarmac, with giant passenger airplanes taxiing by way of a number of toes of water.

The airport didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider in regards to the movies.

Dubai bought over 4 inches of rain by Tuesday night, across the quantity it sometimes will get in a complete 12 months, CNN reported, citing United Nations knowledge.

The UAE was enjoying rainmaker by cloud seeding

Whereas photos of maximum flooding can present the implications of the local weather disaster, this explicit occasion was worsened by a direct try and play rainmaker — actually.

To deal with water shortage within the sometimes dry nation, the UAE began utilizing a observe known as cloud seeding within the 90s and early 2000s.

Cloud seeding is a technique designed to extend the quantity of water that falls from a cloud. It includes figuring out appropriate clouds after which utilizing plane or ground-based mills to introduce a chemical agent that facilitates the manufacturing of snowflakes.

Cloud seeding has been utilized in international locations worldwide, together with in western US states coping with drought, like California, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Texas.

The observe has lengthy been controversial, with critics dismissing it as an try and “play God” or being probably dangerous to the atmosphere or public well being. Scientists haven’t documented dangerous impacts of cloud seeding, and current research have advised that the observe works.

However in line with Bloomberg, the UAE’s cloud seeding operations contributed on to the heavy rainfall that fell this week.

Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist on the UAE’s Nationwide Middle of Meteorology, advised the outlet that two planes carried out cloud seeding operations on Monday and Tuesday and that seven seeding missions had been carried out in two days.

“For any cloud that is appropriate over the UAE you make the operation,” Habib advised Bloomberg.

Regardless of warning residents to stay residence through the heavy rain, the UAE authorities’s press workplace mentioned they had been “rains of goodness,” because the nation has handled an increase in heat-related diseases and deaths that some hope may be alleviated by a rise in rainfall.