Extreme rainfall in Dubai late on Monday and Tuesday triggered the worst flooding in over seven decades in one of the world’s most advanced but arid cities. The intensity of the rainfall sparked speculation that cloud seeding may have led to it, prompting climate scientists to underline the climate change link to it.
Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, dismissed the notion that cloud seeding caused the heaviest rainfall in Dubai for 75 years. She emphasized that the focus should be on climate change, stating that extreme rainfall events are becoming more severe globally due to a warmer atmosphere holding more moisture.
Otto explained that even if cloud seeding did encourage clouds to drop water in certain places, the atmosphere would have likely been carrying more water to form clouds in the first place because of human-induced climate change. She warned that if humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the climate will continue to warm, leading to heavier rainfall and more devastating floods.
Former earth sciences ministry secretary and climate scientist M Rajeevan also weighed in, calling the Dubai rain a clear signal of climate change. He highlighted that with global warming, heavy rainfall events are more common as a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, leading to intense downpours.
Rajeevan noted that a low-pressure weather system over the region, coupled with an anticyclone over the Arabian Sea, contributed to the heavy rains in Dubai. He mentioned that models were able to predict this event almost 72 hours in advance, underscoring the impact of climate change on extreme weather events.