Extreme Dubai rainfall linked to climate change, not cloud seeding: Scientists

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, said the heaviest rainfall in Dubai for 75 years did not happen because of cloud seeding. Focusing on cloud seeding is misleading,” said Otto, one of the leading climate attribution scientists, in a video Imperial College London released on Thursday evening. Even if cloud seeding did encourage clouds around Dubai to drop water, the atmosphere would have likely been carrying more water to form clouds in the first place because of human-induced climate change.” Otto underlined it is important to note that it would have rained in the region irrespective of cloud seeding just because of the big scale of the rainfall system.