A day after heavy rains brought life to a standstill in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the country's weather office has snubbed reports that it was cloud seeding that caused excessive rains. Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern.
Not a single cloud seeding flight was done during the period that the unstable weather situation lasted in the country, Dr Habib Ahmed, a senior meteorologist at the National Center of Meteorology (NCM) told Gulf News.
The NCM issued an alert last Thursday warning of a period of unstable weather, rainfall, strong winds, dust storms, thunderstorms, and hail across the country. The alert said that rain-bearing clouds starting from the western parts of the country, would move over the entire country, starting Sunday, causing rainfall of different intensities. "The weather situation has been very strong in the entire region,” Dr Habib said.
He added that there was very deep low pressure from the Southwest and Oman, moving into our country. "At the same time, there was a deep low-pressure situation in the upper layer of the atmosphere over the UAE. There was also humid air moving from the Arabian Sea towards the UAE and Oman, since Sunday. This is what caused the unstable weather in the country," he added.
Meanwhile, other experts too rubbished reports that cloud seeding had caused the predicament in the Emirate. They believe the rainfall was likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, reported Reuters.
Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said rainfall was becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.
"It was misleading to talk about cloud seeding as the cause of the heavy rainfall," she said."Cloud seeding can't create clouds from nothing. It
encourages water that is already in the sky to condense faster and drop water in certain places. So first, you need moisture. Without it, there'd be no clouds," she said.
But the effects of global warming cannot be ignored. "Global warming has resulted in "extraordinarily" warm water in the seas around Dubai, where there is also very warm air above," Mark Howden, Director at the Australian National University's Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions told Reuters.
"This increases both potential evaporation rates and the capacity of the atmosphere to hold that water, allowing bigger dumps of rainfall such as what we have just seen in Dubai."
Flights cancelled
The rains disrupted flights from India to Dubai after the airport was flooded. Air India, which operates 72 weekly flights from various cities to Dubai, and IndiGo cancelled their services on Wednesday.
Besides Air India, Air India Express, Vistara, IndiGo and SpiceJet also operate flights from various Indian cities to Dubai, which is also home to a large number of Indian diaspora.
An Air India spokesperson said due to the impact of adverse weather in Dubai, it had to cancel flights to and from the Gulf nation on Tuesday and Wednesday. "We are doing our best to get affected passengers on their way as soon as possible by re-accommodating them on flights in the next few days.
"We are also offering a one-time date change waiver to passengers with valid tickets on 16 and 17 April, allowing them to reschedule their flights to future dates within the validity of the tickets," the spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
An official said 10 flights from the Delhi airport to Dubai were cancelled on Wednesday. Also, nine flights that were to arrive from Dubai to the national capital were cancelled.
In a post on X on Wednesday, IndiGo said all flights to and from Dubai stand cancelled due to operational challenges caused by bad weather and road conditions. SpiceJet, in a post on X, said flights to and from Dubai are affected due to adverse weather conditions in Dubai.
