On April 16, many places in the UAE were hit by thunderstorms and strong convective weather, and Dubai, the second largest commercial city, received one year of rain in 24 hours.
The flooding, the heaviest rainfall since records began in 1949, paralyzed the entire city.
Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's busiest shipping hubs, has also diverted some flights. Flash floods in some areas also killed 18 people.
Many people are surprised that a country in the desert and extremely arid can be hit by torrential rains and even floods.
But a closer look at the weather in the UAE in recent years reveals that the cause of natural disasters is really not as simple as rain...
Since April 15, most parts of the UAE have been hit by torrential rain and thunderstorms, and the National Meteorological Center has issued yellow and orange warnings one after another, and many places have been hit by lightning and hail, and the wind speed has reached 70 kilometers per hour at the peak.
Dubai's precipitation in 24 hours even reaches the local annual rainfall.
The sky was dyed green by the torrential rain, and the wind blew through the high-rise residences, and many furniture and appliances that were swept away by the wind fell from the sky.
Parks and beaches across the UAE have been closed. The UAE government issued an order to suspend work and classes, all civil servants worked from home, all schools were closed, and students were taught online at home.
The flooding caused by the torrential rain caused the roads in downtown Dubai to be surrounded, and countless private cars waded through the water but were tragically overturned.
Residential areas were also flooded, and some residents drove their rubber boats out of their homes in frustration.
Many commercial centers and hotels have been flooded with stagnant water, and all the interior buildings have been destroyed.
The water in the subway is as deep as the ankles of pedestrians.
The busy Dubai airport is also flooded with runways and aprons, with some airliner engines less than 1 meter above the water. The ground crew had to order an emergency shutdown for more than half an hour, racing against time to carry out drainage and internal repairs.
This has also led to the suspension and cancellation of more than 50 flights. The airport is packed with stranded and waiting for the resumption of flights.
Nearby Gulf countries such as Bahrain, Qatar and Oman have also been hit by torrential rains, including flooding in Oman, which killed 18 people and left two missing, most of them young children swept away by the floods on their way to school.
In the public's impression, the United Arab Emirates, whose climate has always been dominated by little rain and drought, will suddenly be hit by lightning and torrential rain, which will lead to flooding, such extreme weather makes many friends feel terrible and puzzled.
As one of the world's largest desert countries, four-fifths of the UAE's 83,600 kilometres are deserts.
Moreover, the UAE belongs to the tropical desert monsoon climate, under the influence of the subtropical high pressure zone and the northeast trade winds, the prevailing downdraft, perennial drought and little rain, the air is dry and hot, the average annual precipitation is only about 100 ml, far from daily life, therefore, one of the drinking water of the UAE people, relying on the way of desalination.
(Seawater desalination plant in Dubai)
Temperatures are at their highest between May and October, with an average daily temperature of around 48.2 degrees Celsius. Even in winter, the temperature is around 8 to 20 degrees Celsius.
Under the action of high temperature and dry climate and solar radiation, the evaporation is large, and the water shortage on the surface is serious. People living here, in order to ensure normal life and production, have to turn on the air conditioning all year round to cool down, so the UAE has always been among the top energy consumers in the world.
From any point of view, rainfall is the best way to reduce energy consumption and reduce the cost of drinking water. As an oil producer, the UAE has been looking for a "self-produced" model of water sources. So, in the 80s of the last century, a 100-year plan was set up - the rainwater enhancement plan.
(Schematic: Workers preparing for artificial rainfall)
In 2015, the UAE officially kicked off the rainwater enhancement plan, laying more than 60 network weather stations across the country.
Six aircraft are deployed in each area, which are specially prepared for artificial rain operations.
Artificial rainfall, also known as cloud seeding, is the flight of an aircraft equipped with salt crystals in the clouds, and after launch, the clouds absorb salt, attract water particles to gather, gain weight, and finally form raindrops to fall.
Artificial rainfall is mainly dependent on meteorological conditions and can only be implemented when there are moist clouds and wind speeds that meet the standards. Therefore, the aircraft that implement artificial rain should be on standby at any time and act immediately when the right time is right.
However, although science-assisted rainfall has indeed brought precipitation, foreign media have questioned whether these modern "rainfall" plans have exceeded the original rainfall from the analysis of the rainfall situation in the UAE in recent years.
("Dubai Floods: Is Artificial Rain the Reason Behind the Rare Downpour in the UAE?")
In October 2019, for example, the UAE's National Climate and Seismology Centre conducted a rain sowing experiment, which eventually led to torrential rains in January 2020, which caused widespread flooding in several cities, paralyzing ground transportation, and flooding commercial and residential buildings.
(Sharjah, one of the cities affected at the time)
At that time, people were already experiencing the catastrophic consequences of the floods. The whole city was shut down, and the losses were countless.
In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the UAE has experienced similar disasters for three consecutive years.
At the beginning of February this year, clouds gathered in most parts of the UAE, so the meteorological department rushed to sow rain, but due to the rapid change of weather, many cities experienced hail and heavy rainfall. The inability of the drainage system to cope with the heavy rainfall in a short period of time led to widespread flooding in some areas, killing four people in neighboring countries.
This time, the heavy rainfall caused the massive floods in many places, which attracted global attention.
However, in the face of doubts about the disaster caused by artificial rainfall, the UAE National Meteorological Center said that the flood was more likely to be caused by extreme weather.
Meteorological department officials said there was no artificial rain at the center before Tuesday's thunderstorm. And every time the center conducts artificial rainfall, it also chooses areas with less dense population density than Dubai. The implication is that the cause of the flood is indeed related to extreme weather.
In addition, it has also been reported that modern cities in the desert have sparse vegetation to "absorb water", and the drainage system cannot cope with the fact that the rainfall is too large to fully prepare for major floods. Such extreme weather, in any city in the world, may not be optimistic.
But take a step back and think about it, since "artificial rainfall" can turn the desert into an ocean at the behest of human beings, why not grasp the scale and let it stop when it falls just right?
The essence of artificial rainfall is to make moist clouds that should flow in one direction turn into rain in another place by means of artificial intervention.
In order to achieve the purpose of artificial rainfall, the aircraft of cloud seeding operations will attack many times and operate frequently when they are instructed, which can easily lead to excessive rainfall and is difficult to accurately control.
But the embarrassing thing is that the places that lack water often lack the ability to cope with floods, and whenever heavy rain and hail occur, the stagnant water often either relies on natural air drying, or has to start pumping trucks.
To this end, in Dubai, for example, the city invested 2.5 billion dirhams (about 4.95 billion yuan) in 2020 to upgrade the underground drainage system, but the speed of renovation sometimes really can't keep up with the speed of impending heavy rains.
At present, the flooding and standing water caused by heavy rains in Dubai have slowly subsided, and the airport has begun to gradually resume flights. It can only be said that in this confrontation between humans and nature, every encounter and outcome is thrilling and unpredictable.