Dubai is underwater. Heavy storms have brought about flash flooding throughout the United Arab Emirates, resulting in surprising scenes circulating on social media: Vehicles deserted by the roadside, planes sloshing by way of flooded runways. A whole bunch of flights have been canceled at Dubai’s busy worldwide airport, and at the least 18 folks have died in neighboring Oman.
Information experiences and social media posts have been fast to level the blame at cloud seeding. The UAE has a long-running program for making an attempt to squeeze extra rain out of the clouds that go over the usually arid area—it has a workforce of pilots who spray salt particles into passing storms to encourage extra water to kind. The floods have been positioned as a cautionary story by some: Right here’s what occurs once you mess with nature. Even Bloomberg reported that cloud seeding had worsened the flooding.
The reality is extra sophisticated. I’ve spent the previous few months reporting on cloud seeding within the UAE for an upcoming WIRED characteristic, and whereas it’s true that the UAE has been operating cloud seeding missions this week—it performs greater than 300 a yr—it’s a stretch to say that it was accountable for the floods. (In truth, as we have been getting ready this story for publication on Wednesday morning, the UAE’s Nationwide Middle for Meteorology instructed CNBC it had not seeded any clouds earlier than the storm struck on Tuesday.)
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There are just a few causes for this. First: Even essentially the most optimistic assessments of cloud seeding say that it might probably enhance rainfall by a most of 25 p.c yearly. In different phrases, it might have rained anyway, and if cloud seeding did have an effect, it might have been to solely barely enhance the quantity of precipitation that fell. The jury continues to be out on the effectiveness of cloud seeding in heat climates, and even when it does work, cloud seeding can’t produce rain out of skinny air, it might probably solely improve what’s already within the sky.
Secondly, seeding operations are inclined to happen within the east of the nation, removed from extra populated areas like Dubai. That is largely due to restrictions on air site visitors, and means it was unlikely that any seeding particles have been nonetheless energetic by the point the storms reached Dubai. A lot of the scientists I’ve spoken to say the impression of cloud seeding has a really small, localized impact and is unlikely to trigger flooding in different areas. However maybe the very best proof that cloud seeding wasn’t concerned in these floods is the truth that it rained everywhere in the area. Oman didn’t do any cloud seeding, nevertheless it was much more badly affected by flooding, with a variety of casualties.
It’s thrilling to level the finger at a scary expertise, however the true explanation for the flooding is probably going extra banal: Dubai is comically ill-equipped to cope with rainfall. The town has expanded quickly over the previous few many years, with little consideration paid to infrastructure like storm drains that would assist it cope with a sudden inflow of water. It’s largely concrete and glass, and there’s little or no inexperienced house to absorb rainfall. The result’s chaos every time it rains—although to be truthful, most cities would battle to cope with a yr’s price of rain falling in 12 hours.
Nevertheless, local weather change might also be enjoying a job. Because the planet heats up, the complicated climate dynamics of the area are shifting and altering in ways in which might deliver extra violent storms. Metropolis planners around the globe try to make their cities “spongier” to assist cope with flash flooding and save extra water for drier elements of the yr. As a substitute of utilizing cloud seeding to show the sky right into a sponge, Dubai can be higher off making an attempt to show town into one.
