Flood in Dubai and cloud seeding, Passerini: «To fight the drought it is better to plan the accumulations» – News Ancona-Osimo – CentroPagina

«Causing 10-15 millimeters of rain to fall with cloud seeding can be useful in the event of drought, but in our country, where there is rainfall, but it is increasingly discontinuous, it is more useful to plan the accumulations». The professor says it Giorgio Passeriniprofessor of Environmental Technical Physics at the Polytechnic University of Marche, speaking on theflood that swept Dubai and which would appear to have been caused by ‘cloud seeding‘.

It is a technique “born almost 80 years ago” which represents “man’s first attempt to interfere with atmospheric phenomena, also experimented for war purposes”. In practice it consists of «pulverize substances that absorb water into the clouds, creating condensation nuclei which then generate rain” among the most used substances are “silver iodide, but also other salts” he explains. Insemination takes place by air.

According to the expert, however, it would be a method that would statistically produce “an increase in precipitation of around 5% on an annual basis”. So what happened in Dubai, where cars were swept away by water and the flooded airport was forced to halt? For Professor Passerini the flood was actually caused «by climate change and cloud seeding would have acted as a trigger for the extreme event by finding more water vapor in the atmosphere.”

Furthermore, Passerini points out that the weather and climate conditions have radically changed compared to when the cloud seeding technique was born and the technical-scientific knowledge of that time. Today some accredited theories “hypothesize that by decreasing polluting emissions into the atmosphere the possibility of rain precipitation is reduced; in fact, it seems that dust contributes to increasing the possibility of rain. This is a hypothesis, what is certain is that we must be careful when using these methods, especially with climate change becoming increasingly evident.”

Cloud seeding in some countries «is used not only to cause rain, but also to clean the air of pollution, but in Dubai the same amount of rain fell in one day as usually falls in a year. Moreover, in an area where rainfall is low and therefore the infrastructure is not suitable to absorb it.”