UAE uses cloud seeding technology to make rain

Rising global temperatures are placing further strain on regions such as the Middle East, which are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

These countries are currently facing major challenges. How can we solve the problem of water scarcity?

Annual rainfall in the UAE averages less than 200mm, compared to London's average of 1,051mm and Singapore's average of 3,012mm.

In the UAE, summer temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), and 80% of the country is covered in desert.

Extreme heat could exacerbate water scarcity issues and impose constraints on domestic agricultural productivity.

The United Nations predicts that by 2025, 1.8 billion people worldwide will face absolute water scarcity. The Middle East stands out as one of the most water-stressed regions, with approximately 83% of the region's population likely to experience high levels of water stress.

As water scarcity is at the heart of the region's challenges, Gulf countries have implemented programs aimed at addressing this problem.

In the 1990s, the UAE introduced a rainfall enhancement technique called cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is a process that increases the amount of rain that falls from clouds in the sky, with the aim of relieving water scarcity issues in the arid regions around the emirate.

By the early 2000s, UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan had allocated up to $20 million to research into cloud seeding. The UAE has partnered with Colorado's National Center for Atmospheric Research and NASA to establish a methodology for its cloud seeding program.

The government has introduced a task force in Abu Dhabi called the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), which conducts more than 1,000 hours of cloud seeding each year to increase rainfall.

NCM has a weather radar network and more than 60 weather stations that manage seeding operations in the country and closely monitor atmospheric conditions.

The center's weather forecasters can observe cloud precipitation patterns and identify clouds suitable for sowing, with the aim of increasing rainfall.

Once they find a suitable cloud, they instruct the pilot to take to the sky in a special aircraft with hygroscopic flares on the plane's wings.

Each flare contains approximately 1 kilogram of salt material components and takes up to three minutes to burn and shoot into a suitable cloud. When a seeding agent is introduced into a cloud, the droplets increase in size, exceeding the cloud's capacity to sustain them against gravity, and are ejected as raindrops.

Skeptics have long argued that governments that deploy weather-altering technology in the skies are “playing God.”

During his visit to NCM, Director-General Abdullah Al Mandus told CNBC that the technology is “based on a scientific background.”

Al Mandus added that Abu Dhabi's program does not use silver iodide, a crystalline substance commonly used as a seeding agent in other countries. Although this substance has been widely criticized for its potential to have harmful effects on the environment and the public, some cloud dispersal studies have shown that there is no substantial evidence that it causes harmful effects at current levels. Shown to not exist.

NCM said it does not use any harmful chemicals in its business operations. “Our specialized aircraft use only natural salt and no harmful chemicals,” the group told CNBC.

Al-Mandous said the center has started manufacturing its own seeding agent, called nanomaterial, which is a finely divided salt coated with titanium oxide and is more effective than what it currently uses.

“You'll get results that are three times more effective than a hygroscopic flare,” he said.

This nanomaterial is currently being tested and experimented in various atmospheres both in the UAE and the US.