United Arab Emirates meteorological officer Abullah al-Hammadi watches weather charts on computer displays for cloud formations as a twin-turboprop plane lifts off under the blazing desert sun with dozens of salt canisters fastened to its wings.
The plane shoots salt flares into the most promising white clouds at 9,000 feet in an attempt to bring down rain.
According to Hamadi, director of rain enhancement activities at the National Centre for Meteorology in the UAE, ‘cloud seeding requires the availability of rainy clouds, and this is an issue as it is not always the case.’
The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation, which remains at less than 100 millimetres (3.9 inches) a year on average.
The UAE has relied on pricey desalination plants that use seawater because to the effects of climate change, a growing population, and an economy that is expanding into tourism and other sectors.
Officials assert that cloud seeding can be beneficial. Hygroscopic, or water-attracting, salt flares are fired into the clouds by Abu Dhabi scientists along with salt nanoparticles, a more recent technology, in an effort to encourage and speed up the condensation process and, ideally, produce droplets large enough to fall as rain.
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