Zeus who? Dubai gifted itself a heavy rainfall during the peak of summer. We tell you more. By Meenakshi Maidas
When the temperatures soared above 100 Fahrenheit (roughly 37.7 Celsius), the people of Dubai had a pleasant surprise with a sudden downpour—induced through fake rain! According to The Independent, the City of Gold’s weather took a U-turn due to ‘cloud seeding’ operations by the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology to increase rainfall. Cloud seeding is basically changing a cloud’s structure to increase chances of precipitation. The UAE’s National Weather Service recently released a video of this downpour.
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For the Gulf country, which gets an average annual rainfall of just about four inches, cloud seeding techniques are a part of an ongoing mission to generate precipitation. The process happens with manned aircrafts firing chemicals such as silver iodide into the clouds. Reportedly, the UAE invested USD 15 million (INR 1,11,51,00,000) in nine different rain-making projects in 2017. “The global water shortage is worsening in many parts of the world, so the demand for freshwater is increasing,” said Linda Zou, a professor at the UAE’s Khalifa University of Science and Technology to the New York Post.
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A project lead by researchers at the University of Reading in England is said to trial a system in the UAE, where drones will be used to shoot electrical charge into the clouds to help improve rainfall. This is aimed at getting water droplets to merge when they get an electric pulse. Moreover, applying electric shocks to create fake rain is preferred because it does not include the use of chemicals.
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