Vehicles drive through standing floodwater caused by heavy rain on an onramp to Sheikh Zayed Road highway in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, April 18, 2024. The United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Thursday from the heaviest rain the desert nation has ever recorded, a deluge that flooded out Dubai International Airport and disrupted flights through the world’s busiest airfield for international travel.
Meteorologists and climate scientists said the extreme rainfall is akin to what the world expects with human-caused climate change, and one way to know for certain that it was not caused by tinkering with clouds is that it was forecast days in advance. Atmospheric science researcher Tomer Burg pointed to computer models that six days earlier forecast several inches of rain — the typical amount for an entire year in the UAE.
“When we talk about heavy rainfall, we need to talk about climate change. Focusing on cloud seeding is misleading,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads a team that does rapid attribution of weather extremes to see if they were caused by global warming or not. “Rainfall is becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.”Clouds need tiny water or ice droplets called nuclei to make rain.