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Controlling the weather sounds like a power reserved for superheroes, but thanks to scientists, it is very much reality in the United Arab Emirates.
According toCBS News, the Middle Eastern country recently began using drones to create rainstorms over its cities, which regularly experience hot temperatures. UAE’s National Center of Meteorology released a pair of Instagramvideosthis week showing heavy rain in the country, including in the Northern beach city of Ras al Khaimah. Typically, UAE only receives about four inches of rain a year, the outlet reported.
“… Understanding more about how rain forms, and with the potential to bring much-needed relief to arid regions, is an extraordinary scientific achievement,” Reading professor Robert Van de Noort said in the statement.
While UAE does not have a lot of rain, it does have “plenty” of cloud coverage, making it a great place to test the technology, researchers toldBBCin March. The team began tests near Dubai earlier this year, Keri Nicoll, an investigator on the project, explained toCNN.
Nicoll said the electrical charges help smaller water droplets merge with the bigger ones, creating even larger raindrops. This is important since smaller raindrops are likely to evaporate before they hit the ground due to the country’s high temperatures.
“What we are trying to do is to make the droplets inside the clouds big enough so that when they fall out of the cloud, they survive down to the surface,” she told CNN in May.
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There is hope the technology can be an environmentally viable answer to water security, the outlet said.
But there is still debate about the process, and some researchers have expressed concerns about whether cloud-seeing in one area could take the rain away from somewhere else.
“There’s still a long way to go to definitively see how effective cloud seeding weather modification is at enhancing rainfall,” Nicoll told CNN.
source: people.com
