150-250 mm of rain in 24 hours, the Dubai flood is the worst since at least 1949
Normally, 94.7 mm of rain falls on Dubai airport – one of the busiest international airports in the world – in a year. Between April 15th and 16th they dropped more than 142 in just 24 hours. The runway as well as a large part of the city flooded in a short time, traffic was interrupted, many homes and commercial activities were inundated. As damage counts continue and clean-up operations begin, the government has announced a complete overhaul of all the country’s infrastructure to adapt to similar incidents, which will become more frequent in the future due to the climate crisis. The Dubai flood was a record-breaking extreme eventunprecedented at least in the last 75 years, i.e. since the beginning of the historical series for the Emirates.
Extreme event, but in line with climate science predictions on the intensification of precipitation and the increase in frequency of these episodes. Yet this time too, as has already happened in other similar recent cases, the explanation of the climate crisis does not convince everyone. The culprit that someone points the finger at is the cloud seeding and cloud seeding operations to have “artificial rain” conducted by the authorities.
The Dubai flood was not caused by cloud seeding
This explanation, like all conspiracy narratives, is linked to some element of truth. The Emirates is one of the countries that most uses cloud seeding. Located in one of the driest regions on the planet where rainfall is very low (under 200 mm per year on average), the country has invested heavily in cloud seeding to increase the total amount of precipitation. And it conducted operations of this type over Dubai in the days before the disturbance arrived.
But not on the same day. She explained it Omar Al YazeediDeputy Director General of NCM, the UAE National Meteorology Centre: “We did not do any cloud seeding during this particular weather event. The essence of cloud seeding is targeting clouds at an earlier stage, before precipitation. Engaging in seeding activities during a heavy storm would prove futile.”.
If the explanation continues to fail to convince many – who prefer to entertain an unspecified conspiracy – it is above all because it is not always clear how cloud seeding works and what the effect of rising temperatures is on precipitation.
Seeding does not create clouds, it can only facilitate the processes that generate rain. Does not create “more rain”, causes precipitation to occur even when the natural conditions of the atmosphere and pressure would not allow it. The techniques used are different, the Emirates use cloud dissemination with particles of natural salts. In any case, the reaction only condenses the humidity that is already present in the atmosphere, it does not increase it.
Instead, global warming is increasing the humidity level. For every degree the air temperature rises, the atmosphere can store 7% more humidity. This means that higher temperatures translate into more potential rain. In a colder climate, the Dubai flood probably would have occurred anyway – the territory is desert, flat, favors surface runoff but does not facilitate runoff into the sea – but it would have been less intense and devastating. It is the same dynamic that has recently led to other very destructive extreme events, such as the flood in Northern Europe in July 2021.
