University of Reading
University of Reading
04/17/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/17/2024 07:33
'Cloud seeding did not cause Dubai floods', expert says
'Cloud seeding did not cause Dubai floods', expert says
17 April 2024
Professor Maarten Ambaum, a meteorologist at the University of Reading who has studied rainfall patterns in the Gulf region, said: "This was an extremely heavy rainfall event which dumped a year's worth of rain across a wide area in a single day. This part of the world is characterised by long periods without rain and then irregular, heavy rainfall, but even so, this was a very rare rainfall event.
"These storms appear to be the result of a mesoscale convective system - a series of medium-sized thunderstorms caused by massive thunderclouds, formed as heat draws moisture up into the atmosphere. These can create large amounts of rain, and when they occur over a wide area and one after another, can lead to seriously heavy downpours. They can rapidly lead to surface water floods, as we have seen in places such as Dubai airport.
"These types of intense rainfall events can be made more extreme due to climate change, as a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapour. Climate scientists have been warning for many years that such extreme events will become more likely in a warmer climate and, indeed, we see this happening around us now.
"The UAE does have an operational cloud seeding programme to enhance the rainfall in this arid part of the world, however, there is no technology in existence that can create or even severely modify this kind of rainfall event. Furthermore, no cloud seeding operations have taken place in this area recently.
"Cloud seeding, as its name suggests, generally involves spreading fine particles into existing clouds into which conditions of wind, moisture and dust are insufficient to lead to rain. In this particular case, there would have been no benefit to seed these clouds as they were predicted to produce substantial rain anyway.
"It's also worth noting that forecasters, including the Global Flood Awareness System (Glofas) which is run by the European Commission as part of the Copernicus programme, were very accurately forecasting a high risk of floods across a wide area of the region a full week ago. Forecasting systems such as this use detailed observations of conditions in the sea, air and land, and combine them in forecast models to predict future flood events. If these models were predicting that floods were highly likely a week ago, it's unlikely that humans could do much about it, other than prepare themselves to get out of the way."
"These storms appear to be the result of a mesoscale convective system - a series of medium-sized thunderstorms caused by massive thunderclouds, formed as heat draws moisture up into the atmosphere. These can create large amounts of rain, and when they occur over a wide area and one after another, can lead to seriously heavy downpours. They can rapidly lead to surface water floods, as we have seen in places such as Dubai airport.
"These types of intense rainfall events can be made more extreme due to climate change, as a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapour. Climate scientists have been warning for many years that such extreme events will become more likely in a warmer climate and, indeed, we see this happening around us now.
"The UAE does have an operational cloud seeding programme to enhance the rainfall in this arid part of the world, however, there is no technology in existence that can create or even severely modify this kind of rainfall event. Furthermore, no cloud seeding operations have taken place in this area recently.
"Cloud seeding, as its name suggests, generally involves spreading fine particles into existing clouds into which conditions of wind, moisture and dust are insufficient to lead to rain. In this particular case, there would have been no benefit to seed these clouds as they were predicted to produce substantial rain anyway.
"It's also worth noting that forecasters, including the Global Flood Awareness System (Glofas) which is run by the European Commission as part of the Copernicus programme, were very accurately forecasting a high risk of floods across a wide area of the region a full week ago. Forecasting systems such as this use detailed observations of conditions in the sea, air and land, and combine them in forecast models to predict future flood events. If these models were predicting that floods were highly likely a week ago, it's unlikely that humans could do much about it, other than prepare themselves to get out of the way."