Flood in Dubai, let’s dismantle the cloud seeding hoax. What the experts say

Article dated 04/19/2024
9.00pm
by Editorial Staff

In recent days we have often heard about the flood that hit Dubai on TV, newspapers and especially on social media.

Someone has called into question the alleged practice of “cloud seeding” (artificial insemination of clouds) to justify a weather event of this magnitude: well, it is a hoax and, above all, passing such a message is worthy of denunciation, as it foments all thatenvironment, of which the web is unfortunately full, made up of conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, etc.

But let’s go in order. The cloud seeding it is a technique used in the United Arab Emirates and consists of spreading Silver iodide in the clouds for facilitate rainfall. Silver iodide is a highly ionizing molecule that acts as a condensation nucleus and simply attracts water droplets towards itself until the final drop becomes too heavy to remain in the air and consequently falls to the ground. It is therefore a mechanism very limited in time and space of dubious certainty, as well as all the other nonsense related to airplane contrails.

The event on April 16th in Dubai was a exceptional extreme event (the rain that is usually recorded in a year and a half fell in just a few hours) well predicted at least 3 days in advance by most meteorological agencies. These were very violent storms which persisted in the same area for many hours also due to a configuration particularly favorable to the triggering of storms as we can see from the forecast map for those days in Dubai area.

To conclude, attributing responsibility for the disaster to silver iodide (it’s not clear on whose part…) is absolutely unfounded and bizarre. We believe that the media and newspapers should take a good deal of responsibility for how they poorly transmitted and reported these facts.
Disclosure based on scientific data and clarity of facts must be the basis of a societyotherwise we risk giving way to conspiracy theories that undermine the institutions and scientific progress.