In Dubai, extreme rainfall led to flooding and chaotic conditions. An expert wants to know: Weather manipulation contributed to this. What's in the theory?
Dubai – More rain fell in the United Arab Emirates in 24 hours than in about two years. It was primarily images from the metropolis of Dubai that went around the world. Images of flooded streets, stuck cars on highways and chaos at the airport. Since the country is actually one of the driest and most water-poor in the world, it didn't take long until the first theories about the unusually high rainfall emerged. One of them: weather manipulation by the Emirates themselves.
Extreme rain and storm in Dubai: Was the weather manipulated with cloud seeding?
The Center for Meteorology (NCM) said on Wednesday evening that the rainfall in the desert region was the heaviest since weather records began 75 years ago. In the United Arab Emirates it rains around 100 to 150 millimeters a year. Up to 254 millimeters fell on Tuesday alone. There were also severe storms and hail. An expert and several social media users want to know the reason for the extreme weather in Dubai and the surrounding area. The precipitation in the Emirates is said to have been partially caused by a method of weather manipulation, so-called cloud seeding.
Cloud seeding involves creating artificial rain by “seeding” clouds with substances such as silver iodide, potassium iodide and dry ice. The materials are injected by aircraft or rockets and serve as condensation nuclei. This should make the clouds heavy enough to bring more and quicker precipitation to the earth.
Explosive theory about cloud seeding – Emirates have been using this method for more precipitation for years
Ahmed Habib, meteorologist from the NCM, shared his explosive theory to the news portal
Bloomberg
. According to him, before the severe storms, several aircraft flew out on seven of the cloud seeding missions within two days. The method has been used in the Emirates since the 2000s to counteract the increasing heat and drought in the region. According to a report by the US portal
Wired,
around 300 missions are carried out each year. Other countries are also using the idea of influencing the weather, which was developed in the 1940s. Including China and Russia, clouds are also being “vaccinated” in the western United States and Indonesia.
“Nonsense” – Meteorologist and journalist contradict cloud seeding theory
But does cloud seeding really have the potential to cause floods like the recent ones in Dubai? In contrast to the meteorologist Ahmed Habib, the Austrian meteorologist Marcus Madsak is convinced: “No, this amount of rain can never be caused by cloud seeding”. On X he describes the theory as “nonsense, fake, conspiracy”. A journalist at
Wired
, who has been researching weather manipulation for months, also writes that the flood in Dubai had nothing to do with cloud seeding. Cloud seeding couldn't create rain from nothing - just amplify what's already in the sky. In addition, operations would be limited to the east of the country and far from densely populated areas. Otherwise air traffic would be restricted at one of the world's largest airports in Dubai.
In addition to experts and journalists, the meteorology center in Dubai itself rejects the claims. There were no aircraft on a vaccination mission before or during the heavy rainfall, the center told
CNBC
. The safety of the population and pilots is taken very seriously, which is why “cloud seeding operations are not carried out during extreme weather events”.
Extreme weather not only in Dubai: Experts see climate change as the cause
Whether cloud seeding related to the floods actually exists in the United Arab Emirates cannot be independently verified. However, another argument against this is that even in Oman, where cloud seeding is not carried out, heavy rainfall caused chaos and at least 18 deaths. German climate researcher Friederike Otto studies individual extreme weather events linked to climate change and told
AFP
the storms were "most likely" made worse by global warming. There are repeated warnings about the effects of global warming, which include heavy rainfall.
(nbe with material from AFP and dpa)