Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has revealed that it is using 'enhanced' or 'fake' rain technologies to combat heat and drought in the desert kingdom.
The UAE has increasingly suffered from increasing temperatures and lack of rainfall in the already extraordinarily hot nation, with temperatures frequently exceeding 50 degrees centigrade. To fight this, the UAE have been using a series of futuristic technologies to create rain, thereby tackling drought.
UAE's National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) recently released a video of an unusual rainstorm and then suggested on twitter that it was their 'rain seeding' technologies that were causing it.
أمطار القوع #أبوظبي #المركز_الوطني_للأرصاد #أمطار_الخير #أصدقاء_المركز_الوطني_للأرصاد #Øالة_الطقس #Øالة_جوية #هواة_الطقس pic.twitter.com/pL2rK2KP6a
— المركز الوطني للأرصاد (@NCMS_media) July 21, 2021
أمطار الوقن #أبوظبي #المركز_الوطني_للأرصاد #أمطار_الخير #أصدقاء_المركز_الوطني_للأرصاد #Øالة_الطقس #Øالة_جوية #هواة_الطقس #Øمود_الشامسي pic.twitter.com/g068mchbFa
— المركز الوطني للأرصاد (@NCMS_media) July 21, 2021
The UAE has been looking into rain seeding technology since the 1990s. These technologies involve the use of aeroplanes, which fly over cloud formations and release silver iodide or other crystalline particles. These create ice crystals in the cloud, which melt and fall like rain. Another technique involves drones that fly into the clouds and release an electromagnetic charge that causes rain to form and fall.
The techniques used have been said to have increased rainfall in the UAE by between 15 and 35%.
While many endorse these techniques, other scientists have suggested that these are largely ineffective and costly, and far better measures could be used in which to dampen the sizzling heat and drought.
While the creation of rain is a fairly new technique, the technology to artificially stop rain has been used for decades. In such a technique, aeroplanes release chemicals into clouds in order to stop them dropping rain onto the Earth below.
Climate change and global warming is of particular danger to countries such as the UAE who already suffer from the heat and lack an abundant clean water supply. Many fear that the increasing heat may make the UAE completely unliveable in years to come and therefore large amounts of money is already being put into other technologies and programs that will benefit the kingdom in the years ahead.
[h/t: IFL Science]
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