2024-04-25 09:53:07
Dubai: On April 16, unprecedented rains created havoc in the United Arab Emirates and its surrounding areas. In some parts of the Arabian Peninsula, as much rain fell in 24 hours that day as it usually rains in 18 months. The rain had spoiled the picture of Dubai, the smartest city of UAE. Water was visible everywhere in Dubai. The situation became such that flights had to be stopped at Dubai International Airport. The airport had become like a port. Many experts had blamed cloud seeding in UAE for this heavy rain. But Richard Washington, professor of climate science at Oxford University, does not believe so. He says that it is not within the power of humans to bring the kind of rain that has happened in Dubai. Being a meteorologist in the chat group, I looked at the satellite and forecast model data. What I saw were the ingredients of a perfect storm. What typically keeps old deserts like the Arabian Peninsula very dry is frequent and rapid sinking of air, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed for rain. In deserts near warm oceans, evaporation is abundant. But that moisture is captured by the sinking air above. It is like a pan whose lid is firmly fixed. What took the lid off the cauldron on April 16 was a very high-altitude jet stream unusually far south. There were actually two jet streams, the subtropical jet and the polar jet, which had united and left behind imported, cold air.
The size of the storm was equal to France
The sinking air was gone along with the lid of the pan. Meanwhile, the flow of moist air from the northern tropical Indian Ocean was increasing rapidly and gathering in the desert. Dew point temperatures in the UAE were generally similar to those found in the rainforests of the Congo Basin. Under these conditions, storms develop very rapidly. Infrared satellite data showed that it was about the size of France.
Dubai Floods: What is the reason for the situation like heavy rains and terrible floods in Dubai?
cloud seeding not guilty
It is difficult to understand the power, intensity and organization of such a storm. Richard Washington said, What surprised me was not the majesty of nature, but the news attributing the coming rain to cloud seeding. In one it was also said that Reading University, a center of meteorological expertise, was responsible for this. It is learned that the UAE has been running a cloud seeding project, the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, for several years. So could seeding have created a massive storm system the size of France? This would be like stopping an intercity train going at full speed by a gust of wind. And there was no seeding flight that day. The dark, massive clouds that formed on April 16 were not caused by the experiment. Interestingly, humans have difficulty accepting the fact that 2,400 gigatons of carbon (our total emissions since pre-industrial times) could make a difference to the climate, but they readily accept that some Hygroscopic flares can cause 18 months’ worth of rain in one day.