by Antonio Scalari
In recent days an extreme weather event has hit several countries in the Persian Gulf. A disturbance dumped a massive amount of rain on the region, which hit the United Arab Emirates and Oman with particular intensity. As https://twitter.com/UAEmediaoffice/status/1780326720588906951 the Emirates Government Communications Office, the country’s National Meteorology Center recorded the largest amount of rainfall in 75 years. In the Al Ain city area, more than 254 millimeters fell in 24 hours, an amount greater than the rainfall that normally accumulates in a year and a half. Extreme rainfall caused flash floods, as shown by images and videos https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1780733022444068908 by the media. In Oman there were 18 victims. In Dubai, the most populous city in the Emirates, water https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1780693076018655708 the roads and tracks ofhttps://twitter.com/aviationbrk/status/1780233575041786084. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled.
Despite the arid climate, heavy rains are not uncommon phenomena in the southern Arabian Peninsula at this time of year. But the scale of this event, as demonstrated by the rainfall data and its impact, was exceptional. When images of what was happening in Dubai began to circulate, https://twitter.com/TheEyewallWx/status/1780689750799638848 the news that the heavy rains were the result of an operation cloud seeding, which the Emirati government would have carried out in the previous days. The hypothesis was relaunched by https://twitter.com/SkyTG24/status/1780571826307117495 https://twitter.com/repubblica/status/1780595346567262541.
What is cloud seeding and why it has nothing to do with floods in Dubai
The cloud seeding – literally “cloud seeding” – is a technique that consists of dispersing substances in the air, such as silver iodide, which should function as condensation nuclei within the clouds and stimulate the fall of rain or snow. Developed in the 1940s, it has been used to stimulate rainfall during periods of drought. However, after decades of trials, scientific evidence on its effectiveness is rather limited. The Emirates National Meteorological Center operates a program of cloud seeding, but denied the claims that appeared in some media, stating that they had not carried out any operations in the days before the rains. In any case, several experts in meteorology, climatology and hydrology have explained why this technique is not the cause of the atmospheric event that hit Dubai.
The University of Reading, in the United Kingdom, published comments from some of the university’s scientists. As meteorologist Maarten Ambaum explains, the cause of the extreme rainfall and floods was a mesoscale convective system, that is, a vast complex of storms that can dump rain for hours. A week ago the Global Flood Awareness System (GFAS), of the European Copernicus programme, had predicted a high risk of floods in the area of the United Arab Emirates and a high accumulation of rainfall had been indicated by models, such as that of the European Center for medium-range weather forecasts (ECMFW).
Even if it had been executed, https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1780587371408273776 Ambaum, a speech by cloud seeding it would have limited itself to hitting individual clouds already present, but it would not have had a significant impact in an atmospheric event as large and energetic as the one that affected the Persian Gulf area. As atmospheric physicist Giles Harrison notes, there is a substantial difference in the scale of the processes involved and there would have been no reason to even attempt cloud seeding in this circumstance, since heavy precipitation had been forecast.
Climatologist Friederike Otto, an expert in studies on the attribution of extreme events to climate change, says that focusing on cloud seeding it is misleading. This technique cannot create clouds out of nothing, but it stimulates the moisture that is already in the atmosphere to condense more quickly and drop rain on a certain area. But first, you need humidity. And this is precisely one of the parameters that climate change is influencing.
The Clausius–Clapeyron equation, linking the variation of pressure to that of temperature in a system where a substance is in equilibrium between two phases, for example liquid and vapour, establishes that air retains approximately 7 percent of humidity more for every degree centigrade of temperature increase. The equation deals with the overall humidity in the atmosphere, it does not predict the amount of precipitation. Climate change, however, is intensifying the hydrological cycle globally, affecting the evaporation of water from soils and precipitation. This phenomenon, on a global scale, can translate into different effects at a local level. Although it may seem paradoxical, this explains why climate change increases the intensity and frequency of droughts and intense rainfall, two phenomena that are at opposite extremes.
At the moment we do not know if and how much climate change has influenced the floods in Dubai. An attribution study will eventually establish this. But, from their statements, it is clear that scientists are interested in reading this event in light of what is happening in the planet’s climate system.
Cloud seeding and chemtrails: unfounded but reassuring explanations
Despite the evidence, several users on https://twitter.com/boni_castellane/status/1780984329104916835 https://twitter.com/fratotolo2/status/1780521840370135064 https://twitter.com/itsmeback_/status/1780987909627060602 the Dubai floods pointing the finger at the cloud seeding and invoking it both as an alternative explanation for climate change and as https://twitter.com/Wondercri1982/status/1779540604076048476 of the veracity of the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory. The cloud seeding it has nothing to do with what that baseless theory describes as “chemtrails.” But in conspiracy visions the contours become blurred: cloud seeding and “chemtrails” become synonymous, manifestations of the existence of dark plans for meteorological manipulation.
The cloud seeding has now become a climate denialist trend. It also emerged during the floods that occurred in Romagna in May 2023. The same subjects who deny that some human activities can change the climate in the long term blame other human activities for individual atmospheric events. The roles are reversed and the true deniers would be those who deny that the rains and floods in Dubai or Emilia Romagna were caused by cloud seeding.
Denialist and conspiracy theses are fueled by the need to find convenient and ideologically reassuring explanations of what is happening around us. Climate change affects everyone, starting from its causes. Despite having different historical and political responsibilities even within rich countries, in one way or another we are all within a status quo based on fossil fuels, that is, on the cause of global warming. Those who deny climate change, therefore, also do so to distance themselves from the responsibility of having to acknowledge that this status quo cannot persist. Therefore he denies that climate change itself has already destabilized and distorted the reality in which we were born and raised.
On the contrary, accuse the cloud seeding, the non-existent chemtrails, or other single entities, allows you to shift the entire responsibility for what happens to subjects other than yourself, your community or your country: a foreign government, an organization or any agent portrayed as evil and enemy. “If it’s the fault of the cloud seeding or chemtrails then I have nothing to do with it.” To convince yourself of this, you are willing to believe that a little silver iodide can trigger a huge storm system, but not that, as science has shown, tens of billions of tons of a greenhouse gas emitted every year in atmosphere can increase the temperature of the planet. But this is the comforting lie of climate denial.
Tags: Cloud seeding didnt Dubai floods
