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Years ago, I found myself climbing the narrow stairs of a Learjet on a hot runway in an abandoned airport close to the border of South Africa and Mozambique. The humidity was palpable, creating dense air.
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The weather radar was showing a fast-developing thundercloud. Our mission was to fly through the most active part of the storm, measure it, fly through again while dumping a bin load of dry ice, turn hard and fly through for a final measurement.
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The radar displayed a rapidly forming thunderstorm. Our task involved flying through the most intense area of the storm, taking measurements, flying through again while releasing a large quantity of dry ice, making a sharp turn, and flying through once more to take a final measurement.
The turbulence inside the Learjet was so intense that it felt like being inside a food blender. Below, another plane was navigating through storm downdrafts and rain. This was not a common occurrence, as indicated by the saucer-sized hail dents on the Learjet's wings from previous encounters.
Apart from the excitement of navigating through the center of a thunderstorm in a Learjet, I didn't really dwell on the experience of being involved in that project. That is, until news of the unusual storm in Dubai caught my attention.
Rain Augmentation Project
I participated in a project called Rain Augmentation in Nelspruit, which aimed to increase rainfall through cloud seeding. This process involves introducing small particles into clouds to stimulate the formation of rain droplets. As these droplets combine and grow larger, they eventually precipitate as rain. The goal of cloud seeding is to enhance the development of rain-producing clouds by providing nuclei for droplet formation.
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No single flight can demonstrate the effectiveness of cloud seeding. This is because there is no exact replica of a cloud to compare the results of seeding. Therefore, it is important to conduct multiple flights and only seed half of them while measuring both seeded and unseeded clouds. This creates a dataset for the experiment (seeded clouds) and a control group (unseeded clouds).
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The statistical analysis of Rain's results was extremely thorough. Despite years of effort, adjustments to the rain rates of certain storms were ultimately successful. However, it was not feasible to definitively demonstrate that any single storm had been altered.
A perfect storm refers to a combination of events or circumstances that together create a powerful and destructive outcome.
Original Text
Early on Tuesday morning, April 16, the chat network of my school class which is replete with global insights after 40 years of dispersion, lit up with reports of unprecedented rain from Brendan in Bahrain and Ant in Dubai. Ant is a pilot and was flying out of Dubai that morning. He duly relayed photographs of his flight over the saturated desert.
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On the morning of Tuesday, April 16, the chat group of my school class, filled with worldwide experiences acquired over 40 years of separation, became active with updates of record-breaking rain from Brendan in Bahrain and Ant in Dubai. Ant, who is a pilot, was departing from Dubai that morning and shared images of his flight over the drenched desert.
Parts of the Arabian Peninsula experienced nearly a year and a half worth of rain within just one day on Tuesday. The airport was so flooded that it resembled a port. As the meteorologist in the group chat, I examined the satellite images and forecast data. What I observed was the perfect combination of factors for a severe storm.
– The reason why old deserts like those in the Arabian Peninsula remain extremely dry is typically due to the continuous and strong descent of air, which is the opposite of what is needed for rainfall. This descending air is extremely dry as it originated from the cold upper atmosphere, and gets compressed and heated as it moves downwards. It reaches the surface with the resemblance of a hairdryer.
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In arid regions near warm oceans, there is ample evaporation occurring beneath this particular layer. However, the moisture is trapped by the descending air above, creating a situation similar to a covered cauldron.
The reason the lid on the cauldron was lifted on April 16 was due to a high-altitude jet stream that was farther south than usual. Both the subtropical and polar jet streams had merged and caused a cut-off circulation of cooler air to be left behind. As a result, the sinking air and the lid on the cauldron disappeared.
Meanwhile, a flow of humid air was speeding in from the northern tropical Indian Ocean and coming together over the desert. Dew point temperatures in the UAE were comparable to those typically seen in the rainforests of the Congo basin.
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During these circumstances, thunderstorms form easily and a unique type of storm, known as a mesoscale convective system, emerged and lasted for several hours. Infrared satellite images revealed that it was as large as the country of France.
Cloud seeding not responsible
The practice of cloud seeding is not the cause of the problem.
– The force, strength, and structure of a storm such as this is difficult to comprehend. What caught my attention, however, was not the grandeur of nature, but a growing number of claims attributing the resulting rainfall to cloud seeding. A newspaper even suggested that the University of Reading, a prominent institution in the field of meteorology, was implicated.
It has been discovered that the UAE has been conducting a cloud seeding initiative, known as the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, for a number of years. Their method involves releasing hygroscopic salt flares from planes into warm cumuliform clouds. The goal is to enhance the development of cloud droplets and consequently increase rainfall, similar to a project I previously participated in. Larger droplets are more likely to precipitate.
So, is it possible that the seeding could have created a massive storm system as large as France? To put it simply, that would be like a small gust of wind halting a high-speed intercity train. Additionally, the seeding flights did not take place on that day. The experiment was not intended to produce the deep, large-scale clouds that formed on April 16.
The author highlights the paradox in human perception when it comes to the impact of carbon emissions on climate change compared to the immediate response to sudden weather changes caused by hygroscopic flares. Despite the vast amount of carbon emissions released since pre-industrial times, people struggle to grasp its significance, yet they quickly understand and react to the extreme weather events caused by artificial intervention.
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