Artificial rain

How Dubai deliberately triggers crazy weather capers

Dubai is not designed for heavy rain. Flooding is the result.

(Bild: константин константи - stock.adobe.com)

Rain in the United Arab Emirates? Both a curse and a blessing for the state's inhabitants. While the few cultivation areas need the water just as urgently as the population itself, the big cities such as Dubai are experiencing increasingly frequent freak weather, for which the infrastructure is not designed.

It is extremely rare for Dubai to receive more than 100 mm of rainfall per year - the rainfall experienced by the United Arab Emirates this week was the heaviest since records began. As a result, Dubai's streets turned into rivers and the airport tarmac was also flooded. Meteorologists report that as much rain fell on the dust-dry earth in just a few hours as has otherwise fallen in a year and a half.

The entire region is in desperate need of water. The supply of liquid gold cannot keep pace with the rapid population growth - 800,000 people move to the Emirates every year.

Nature gets a helping hand
The desert state shares this problem with its neighbors. The joy was all the greater last year when the heavens opened their gates over Pakistan, allowing large amounts of rain to fall to the earth. "The technology was a gift from the United Arab Emirates," said the chief minister of the most populous province, Punjap. Technology? Yes, because nature has been given a helping hand in major cities such as Lahore for several years.

Artificial rain is intended to alleviate water shortages on the one hand and purify the air on the other, making air pollution at least more bearable. With its eleven million inhabitants, Lahore is one of the cities with the highest levels of air pollution. So they asked for help. And they found what they were looking for in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has been researching cloud seeding for many years.