The statement followed a flurry of posts on social media attributing the record rain to cloud seeding — the process of manipulation of existing clouds to induce rain.
So, what is cloud seeding?
More simply: Cloud seeding involves adding tiny particles (like silver iodide) into a cloud to give moisture something to attach to and form droplets.
The scientists also concluded that cloud seeding did not have "significant influence" on the flooding.
The researchers combined historical observations with climate models to investigate if climate change is driving the increase in rainfall.
A year’s worth of rain in 24 hours submerged Dubai, a city in the desert proud of its modern gloss, in 142mm inches of water on April 16.
The impact clogged roads, flooded homes, and social media ran rife with videos of a Dubai Air plane attempting a landing at the Dubai International Airport. The monthly average for April for the city is only about 8mm.
The airport, the world’s busiest for international travel and a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates, received closed to 127mm of rain — about 76mm is its normal for an entire year.
According to authorities Oman received around 230mm (9 inches) of rain between Sunday and Wednesday. The average rainfall in the capital, Muscat is about 100mm (4 inches) per year. Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia also witnessed rains.
Ahead of the flooding, the country’s disaster management authority on April 15 said in a post on X: “In preparation to the upcoming weather conditions in the country, NCEMA urges the esteemed public to comply with instructions and guidance issued by official authorities to safeguard lives and properties.”
A day after the flooding, the NCM issued another statement saying that cloud seeding efforts were conducted near the city on Sunday and Monday, but not on Tuesday — the day of the torrential rain which the state-run WAM news agency called “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949”.
The statement followed a flurry of posts on social media attributing the record rain to cloud seeding — the process of manipulation of existing clouds to induce rain.
In the days since, scientists have categorically rejected these claims and attributed the excess rain to the good old climate change. A rapid analysis of the extreme weather event has led scientists to conclude that given the size of the storm system, the intensity of the rainfall would have been same regardless of the cloud seeding efforts.
So, what is cloud seeding?
Clouds are made up of tiny water droplets or ice crystals that form when water vapor in the atmosphere cools and condenses around a tiny particle of dust or salt floating in the atmosphere. Without these particles, known as condensation or ice nuclei, raindrops or snowflakes cannot form and precipitation will not occur.
Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei (like silver iodide) into certain types of subfreezing clouds. These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form. After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow, the Desert Research Institute (DRI) says.
More simply: Cloud seeding involves adding tiny particles (like silver iodide) into a cloud to give moisture something to attach to and form droplets. These droplets merge and become heavy enough to fall as rain.
On its website, DRI explains the process such: “When storm systems move through a cloud seeding project area, a solution containing a small amount of silver iodide is burned from ground-based generators or released from aircraft. Upon reaching the cloud, the silver iodide acts as an ice forming nuclei to aid in the production of snowflakes.”
To be sure, silver iodide is a naturally occurring substance, and is not known to be harmful to humans or wildlife.
The technology has existed for some decades, and its use was always expected to rise.
A brief bibliography of Cloud Seeding published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in June 1990 said, “Many experts believe cloud seeding activities so widespread in the 1960s and 1970s will return to vogue if water shortages continue to grow.”
In the UAE, cloud seeding has been a part of the country’s efforts to solve water shortages since 1990s. In 2017, the government provided $15 million for nine different rain-enhancement projects.
The effectiveness of these projects is yet to be established.
But climate change fueled the floods.
A rapid analysis of the circumstances of the floods by the World Weather Attribution group said the heat pumped into the atmosphere by humans made the record rainfall 10-40% heavier. Last year’s El Nino weather phenomenon also drove the intense storms.
The higher ocean temperatures added more moisture to the atmosphere, making heavy rainfall more likely.
The scientists also concluded that cloud seeding did not have "significant influence" on the flooding.
Given the size of the storm system, massive rainfall would have happened regardless of whether cloudseeding had been carried out, the researchers said in a statement on Thursday. “Warming caused by burning fossil fuels is the most likely explanation for the increasing rainfall,” the statement said.
The researchers combined historical observations with climate models to investigate if climate change is driving the increase in rainfall. Most of the models analysed did not show a strong influence of global warming on heavy one-day rainfall events in the region. But again the scattered and sparse rainfall limits the researchers’ confidence in these results, the statement said.
“This is a hyper-arid area which has made this study a bit more difficult from a statistical, observational point of view than most other studies on heavy rainfall,” said Friedrike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment.
Mansour Almazroui from the Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah, said rainfall in the region is rare. “In 2009, the Saudi Arabian region received an extreme rain of 74 mm in 2011. Around 111 mm of rainfall was recorded. In 2022, around 159 mm was recorded. This year it is 254.8 mm [in UAE’s Khatm Al Shakla in Al Ain] in less than 24 hours.”
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. At 1.2°C of global warming, the atmosphere can hold about 8.4% more moisture. Changing circulation patterns driven by global warming can increase rainfall in particular regions. There are no other known explanations for the increasing rainfall in the Arabian Peninsula, the researchers said.
“Cloud seeding was reported to not have been implemented in the context of this event, and additionally even in case of implementation has no influence on the amount of atmospheric moisture available, which was the main anomalous variable preceding the precipitation event. Hence, we can conclude that cloud seeding had no significant influence in the event.”
Another problem that may have fueled the crisis in Dubai was its unpreparedness for such heavy rainfall. UAE, like most nations in the arid, desert region of the Arabian Peninsula, does not receive a lot of rain except in the cooler winter months. The country is unprepared to handle the amount of rain it witnessed as roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding.
Tannu Jain, HT's deputy chief content producer, picks a piece of climate news from around the globe and analyses its impact using connected reports, research and expert speak
