fact finder
Human weather manipulation is said to have triggered the storms in Dubai, it is said online. Of all things, the statements of a meteorologist gave fuel to the rumors. He now denies it – like many other experts.
“Storm surge in Dubai after artificial weather influence”: The cause of the devastating storm in Dubai and the surrounding area was quickly identified on social networks and on conspiracy ideological sites – so-called cloud seeding.
This Dubai government program is “completely out of control,” it says on Platform
Some users went even further and wrote of a “weather attack” on Dubai, “presumably related to their relations with Iran.” Others used the event to downplay the consequences of climate change by claiming that so-called geoengineering was the real cause of severe weather events around the world. But how is it that this heavy rain caused so much speculation?
There were severe thunderstorms in Dubai that caused flooding.
Meteorologist spreads rumors
The heavy rain on the Persian Gulf coast of the Arabian Peninsula was the heaviest rainfall since weather records began: In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – which also includes the emirate of Dubai – as much precipitation fell within 24 hours otherwise average in a whole year.
Shortly after the storm, a meteorologist’s statement made the rounds that the heavy rain had been caused, at least in part, by deliberate weather manipulation. Cloud seeding is said to have been responsible for the heavy rain.
Ahmed Habib from the National Center for Meteorology in Abu Dhabi told the Bloomberg news site that several aircraft flew out on seven of the cloud seeding missions within two days before the severe storms. Many other media outlets and users on social networks picked up on this statement and spread it further.
Own statement denied
A little later, however, Habib retracted his statements in an interview with the Gulf News: During the period in which the unstable weather situation in the country continued, not a single cloud seeding flight was carried out. Anything else is misinformation spread by some media outlets and social media accounts.
According to the meteorologist, very strong, deep low pressure areas from the southwest and Oman as well as in the upper atmospheric layer over the United Arab Emirates are responsible for the storms. In addition, moist air has also moved from the Arabian Sea towards the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Cloud seeding works – a little
However, that didn’t stop the rumors, which is hardly surprising. The claim that deliberate weather manipulation causes disasters is one of the oldest and most widespread conspiracy myths. In fact, like other countries, cloud seeding is used in the United Arab Emirates to generate rainfall.
To do this, particles are shot into the clouds using aircraft or ground cannons. They attract moisture, which then falls to the ground as snow or rain. However, this “vaccination” of clouds can only work if there are clouds. Then they release more precipitation than naturally.
Meteorologist Fink rules out cloud seeding as the cause of the storms.
Weather phenomenon, not manipulation
“Cloud seeding cannot play a role in this case,” says Andreas H. Fink, professor of meteorology at the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Rather, an exceptional weather situation would be responsible for the heavy rainfall, the meteorologist explains ARD fact finder.
The main reason is an unusual weather situation, which has resulted in increased rainfall in the region in recent weeks and months. Looking from north to south, a high pressure area is layered over a low pressure area, both of which remain largely stationary.
The low pressure area was in the Middle East region and brought moist air. At the same time, the source regions of the moisture, the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf, are one to two degrees warmer than usual at this time of year, so there was more moisture in the air.
Several factors met together
This coincidence of observed weather phenomena is unusual, but not unknown, explains Fink. He knows them from his research in Africa, where such combinations triggered extreme rainfall in the Atlas Mountains, for example. “The warming of the seas is a possible effect of climate change that contributed to the storms – but ultimately it remains one thing: weather.”
In this case, any attempt at cloud seeding would be overwhelmed by the massive forces of the atmosphere and would no longer be noticeable, says Fink ARD fact finder. Such a measure would also manipulate the location, but not the amount of precipitation and would only be effective locally. The storms in the Arab region extended over a very large region from Oman via the United Arab Emirates to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Emirates use less efficient method
In fact, the United Arab Emirates is conducting experiments with weather manipulation. “I don’t think it’s possible that a storm of this magnitude was caused solely by cloud seeding,” explains Jan Henneberger from the Experimental Cloud Physics group at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich to ARD.fact finder.
“As far as I know, salts are deployed in warm liquid clouds using aircraft,” says Henneberger. However, this method is less efficient than using ice-forming aerosols in supercooled liquid clouds, such as that used in the Rocky Mountains in the United States.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is also certain that cloud seeding is not responsible for the storms. The technology is not capable of producing as much rain as in Dubai, he told the AP agency.
Severe weather events are repeatedly incorrectly associated with weather manipulation, such as after the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February 2023.