The weather experiment that really flooded Dubai
Retrieved on:
Thursday, April 25, 2024
That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in a day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s driest regions.
Key Points:
- That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in a day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s driest regions.
- Desert cities like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suffered floods that submerged motorways and airport runways.
- Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.
- Richard Washington, a professor of climate science at the University of Oxford, has seen the inside of a storm.
- To confirm if cloud seeding really could breed record-breaking rain, he once boarded an aeroplane bound for a thundercloud over the South Africa-Mozambique border.
What caused the flood?
- But by flying a lot of missions, half with cloud seeding and half without, and measuring rainfall between the two, meteorologists eventually showed that cloud seeding did modify rain rates in some storms.
- That’s not what caused Dubai’s floods though.
- Their approach is to fire hygroscopic (water-attracting) salt flares from aircraft into warm cumuliform clouds,” Washington says.
- “So could seeding have built a huge storm system the size of France?
- Let’s be clear, that would be like a breeze stopping an intercity train going at full tilt.
The experiment of our lives
- Although last week’s deluge was unusual, the Arabian Peninsula does tend to receive more of its precipitation in heavy bursts than steady showers.
- What is likely to kill more people as temperatures rise in this part of the world is not water, but heat.
- At this threshold the air is so hot and humid that you cannot lower your temperature to a safe level by sweating.
- Peter Irvine, a lecturer in earth sciences at UCL, proposes dimming the sun by pumping microscopic particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some of its rays.
- These layers of gases that surround our planet have nurtured life by keeping temperatures stable and harmful radiation out.
- Read more:
Time is running out on climate change, but geoengineering has dangers of its ownAs humanity contemplates another large-scale experiment in our atmosphere, there is another, even bigger one, waiting to be resolved.