Dubai Resorts to Creating 'Fake Rain' to Combat Sweltering 122F Heat

The monsoon-like deluge drenches a busy roadway, making driving conditions difficult for the oncoming SUVs. On the side of the road, unexpected waterfalls occur.

(Photo : Sourav Mishra )

It might be typical in Southeast Asia, but this is the United Arab Emirates, in the midst of a summer heat wave that has seen temperatures frequently exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cloud seeding efforts to boost rainfall in the Gulf country, according to the UAE's National Center of Meteorology, aided the precipitation.

The UAE's official meteorological office published video footage of the torrential rains on Sunday.

Increasing Precipitation

(Photo : Vlad Chetan )

Its cloud seeding activities are part of a larger attempt to increase precipitation in the Middle Eastern country, which receives only four inches of rain on average.

Drone technology generates enhanced rain, which sends electrical charges into the clouds, causing them to cluster together and from precipitation.

According to the National, the torrential rains produced waterfalls in the city of Ail Ain, making driving conditions dangerous.

Related Article: NASA Reports Earth Has Been Trapping "Unprecedented" Amount of Heat in Energy Imbalance

Rainmaking Initiatives

In 2017, the UAE committed $15 million in nine different rainmaking initiatives to help the country's declining water table.

Researchers at the University of Reading in England are leading the current technique for changing the electrical charge of clouds. Professor Maarten Ambaum, one of the project's collaborators, told the BBC in March that the UAE had enough clouds to generate rainy conditions.

When the water drops get an electrical pulse, the research aims to cause them to combine and stay together, "like dry hair on a comb."

Prof Ambaum told the BBC that they would fall as rain when the drops mix and become large enough.

Electrical shocks are favored over chemical shocks because they do not involve the use of chemicals.

Rainmaking and Cloud Seeding

Rainmaking, sometimes known as artificial precipitation, artificial rainfall, or pluviculture, is attempting to intentionally produce or enhance precipitation to avoid drought or global warming.

This can be done using airplanes or rockets to sow catalysts such as dry ice, silver iodide, and salt powder to the clouds, to make clouds rain or increase precipitation, to remove or mitigate farmland drought, to increase reservoir irrigation water or water supply capacity, to increase water levels for hydropower generation, or even to swarm the clouds.

The word is also figuratively used to represent the process of attracting new customers to a professional business, such as law, architecture, consulting, advertising, or investment banking-in general, procedures that bring money into a corporation.

Cloud seeding is a kind of weather modification that involves putting chemicals into the air that act as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, altering the microphysical processes within the cloud. The effectiveness of cloud seeding is debatable; some research claims that "it is difficult to prove clearly that cloud seeding has a huge influence."

Effectiveness

(Photo : Unsplash)

The effectiveness of cloud seeding in creating a statistically significant increase in precipitation is still a topic of academic controversy, with varying findings depending on the research in issue and differing opinions among specialists.

Also Read: Satellite Data Shows How Clouds Actually Worsen Global Heating

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