What cause Dubai floods

April 2024

cloud seeding

Cloud seeding is a technique used to improve precipitation. According to the Desert Research Institute, scientists do this by putting tiny particles called nuclei into the atmosphere that attach to clouds.

What caused the rain in Dubai?

But was the rain in Dubai from cloud seeding? "Did cloud seeding play a role? Likely no," Swain said. "But how about climate change? Likely yes!"

The world is continuing to see month after month of record-breaking heat and 2023 was the hottest year globally ever recorded. Scientists have found that warmer temperatures increase evaporation, resulting in more frequent and intense storms, such as the one that occurred in Dubai. Those conditions also fuel other extreme weather events, including droughts, putting opposing forces at intense odds that will likely strain communities without adequate adaptation.

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior researcher at Columbia Climate School, told CBS News he doesn't believe there's any current evidence at this time that cloud seeding pushed the downpour over the edge.
"This event was forecast fairly well days in advance and I think it's unlikely that a cloud seeding operation would move forward given the well-forecast intense rainfall," he said
The nation's National Emergency Crisis and Management Authority issued weather warnings on Monday before the storm's arrival, urging people to comply with local instructions from authorities and asking them to stay at home and only leave in the case of an emergency. Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave the Associated Press a more definitive answer: "It's most certainly not cloud seeding." "If that occurred with cloud seeding, they'd have water all the time," he said. "...when it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai."

The deluge, he said, "speaks more to questions around what are the resilience measures that are integrated into the urban planning standard operating procedures." "Almost everywhere on Earth there is a risk of flash flooding," he said. "Yet, since it's not the most frequent type of extreme event, sometimes it's lower on the priority list when decisions need to be made around infrastructure or resilience, or just urban development more broadly."