The picturesque city of Dubai stands tall over the arid desert climate surrounding it. Known for being one of the richest places on earth, course sand lays out around a city full of technology and advancements in architecture. Cars of every colorcover a city that has been the epicenter of advancement in technology. The rich and wealthy see a safe haven of palm trees, fast cars, and luxurious lifestyles. However, that picturesque city has experienced almost apocalyptic-like severe flooding. Rain poured into apartment buildings and hotel plazas that the likes of the U.A.E people had never seen before. Although this seems like some bizarre once-in-a-lifetime event, the cause may be a bit more poignant. The practice of cloud seeding is something that many have thought to be the cause of some of the most rainfall the U.A.E has seen in the last 75 years.
It’s important to preface this with the fact that Cloud Seeding is not a new practice. It is something that has been used for much longer than some may have expected. The first experiments regarding cloud seeding involved Vincent J. Schaefer, an American meteorologist and chemist. Curious about how to increase rainfall, Shaefer experimented with the practice in 1946. Since then, cloud seeding has been a common practice across the globe, with it being applied in rockets, cannons, aircraft, and ground generators.
With any of the forms of transportation methods, cloud seeding is exactly what it sounds like. In the U.A.E’s case, they used it to apply small particles like silver iodide, into the clouds via aircraft over the desert wonderland of a city. The aircrafts went out on Monday and Tuesday per reports, but there are conflicting reports of what days they were used. In any case, it’s important to note that the U.A.E has been trying to address its water shortages with cloud seeding for years.
Dubai’s floods have called into question what its cause was. This immense flooding interrupted what seemed to be endless perfect weather days in the great desert oasis. With floods affecting everything in everyday life for everyone in the city, it has been a major disruption. However, this event appears to be somewhat forgotten in foreign news as different conflicts continue to ravage the embattled region such as the Hamas-Israel conflict.
In any case, the people in the U.A.E, specifically Dubai, are already trying to rebuild and address what could cause this strange problem that Dubai is unequipped to handle. Although some have seen cloud seeding as the issue, especially in the sense that with social media rumors fly around very fast. Some more credible scientists have made it out to be the result of climate change, and the constantly changing environment as the main culprit behind these strange, once-in-a-lifetime floods.
