Rain in the Desert: Know More About Cloud Seeding

Yesterday, some parts of the UAE had been blessed with slight rain showers. It was not anticipated since the weather had been pretty hot already over the past couple of weeks and we really felt that desert summer already started!

The cloudy weather persisted until this morning in Abu Dhabi and for a moment I thought that it would rain here in the city. Aparently it really rained some parts of Abu Dhabi, just not in city center where I am.

As it is not common for rain to fall during these summer months, two things came to my mind-- (1) the climate change has gone worse, or (2) the UAE has again conducted "cloud seeding".

Oh well, either. But I did get this view at 10:00am.

What is Cloud Seeding?

Cloud Seeding is the process spreading dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) or silver iodine aerosols onto the clouds in order to modify the weather and create precipitation like rain or snowfall.

This can be done by shooting the chemicals from the ground or by spraying them through planes.

Cloud seeding needs to be performed properly, as not all clouds are suitable for this process. It only works with cumulus clouds which are vertical in shape. In the UAE, the National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) has a team dedicated to this task who are equipped with sophisticated radars which can spot appropriate clouds.

How does the rain form?

Once the salts have been sprayed onto the clouds, these salts, because of its hygroscopic nature, attract moisture in the air. These will become the condensation nuclei. When these condensation nuclei bump together, they form bigger droplets. Rain forms when these droplets become too heavy and cannot be suspended in the air anymore.

How reliable is cloud seeding?

Although the cloud seeding has generally helped increase rain, especially in the UAE, the success cannot be directly measured yet. Clouds have different characteristics and it is fairly hard to judge whether the artificial intervention actually made the rain, or if that cloud would have rained on its own.

In the UAE, they conducted 242 cloud seeding missions in 2017 while there were 177 in 2016.

Check out the video below to find out how UAE gets creative in increasing rainfall through cloud seeding. (It shall direct you to an external link.)

_{Source: TheNational.ae}

It doesn't matter.

Cloud seeding or no, I am sure the residents across the Emirates appreciate the slight dip in temperature yesterday and today after a very hot week following the sand storm last weekend.