It\u2019s tempting to call them rainmakers, the people who whoosh up into \nthe skies, inject salts into fluffy clouds and fly back down to the \nground. Except they\u2019re not rainmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2014, there were 193 flights that carried out \u2018rain enhancing \noperations\u2019. And so far in 2015, there have been 20 flights \u2014 all out of\n the Abu Dhabi-Al Ain region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cloud seeding in the UAE began in the 1990s. Back then these \noperations were done at random and it was only in 2001 when some \nscientific studies began on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Centre for Metrology and Seismology (NCMS) in 2004 \nstarted implementing solo projects, as NCMS puts it, \u201cwith our own \nfacilities\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cost of these operations? They won\u2019t say. But if there\u2019s one thing \nAli Al Musallam, Head of the Cloud Seeding Operations Section at NCMS, \ndoes empahsise, it is this: \u201cWe do not cause rain, we simply enhance \nit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the six cloudseed pilots for the six aircrafts deployed for \nthis purpose, Mike \u2014 Michael Anstis \u2014 says, of the most repetitive, \nfrequent questions people ask is: \u201cDo you really make it rain\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No. Nobody makes it rain. They do though make it rain (more). Cloud \nseeding or rain enhancement is one kind of weather modification. (There \nother kinds: fog dispersal, decrease of lightning, hail suspension)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other misconceptions that annoy Musallam are layman conspiracy \ntheories. Cloud seeding has nothing to do with climate change, he says. \n\u201cAnd no, dust storms are not caused when cloud seeding happens \u2014 those \nare simply variables in the weather\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raindrops keep falling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One cloud contains up to 270 million gallons of water \u2014 without being\n seeded. When they are seeded successfully, there is a 30 per cent \nincrease in rain \u2014 whenever it does rain. And that rain then creates \nwater worth $300,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That 30 per cent extra is when the air is free of pollutants, that is\n a \u2018non-turbid atmosphere\u2019. Haze is no good. Because when the air is \nturbid and polluted, there is a 10-15 per cent chance of success. \nThere\u2019s much cost-effectiveness to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This keenness to increase rain, given the desert realities, cannot be\n underestimated. In early 2015, a $5 million dollar programme was \nlaunched by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs (MoPA) mainly to expand\n global water security. They\u2019re looking for ways to \u201cenhancing \nprecipitation to increase rainfall in the UAE, as well as other arid and\n semi-arid areas in the region\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How it\u2019s done?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cloud seeding is done when a cocktail of potassium chloride and \nsodium chloride is injected in cumulus clouds. Once these are injected \nwith salts, they further fluff up, become heavy and cause some bonus \ndroplets. The principle is the same as when salt spills on your kitchen \ncounter, and overnight it turns into beads of moisture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Sufian Farrah, a senior forecaster at NCMS: \u201cThe success\n rate of cloud seeding, when done in turbid atmosphere, that is when \nthere are pollutants in the air, is a mere 10-15 per cent. In non-turbid\n conditions, there is up to a 30 per cent increase in rain if clouds are\n successfully seeded\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ingredients of the flare<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Potassium chloride and sodium chloride are best to attract moisture. \nSometimes up to 7 per cent magnesium is added to the two aforementioned \ncomponents to enable firing. \u201cMagnesium, though, is not always added as \nthen the composition changes and the molecules turn smaller in size,\u201d \nsays Farrah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rough days at work for pilots<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One danger of cloud seeding operations is that the pilots are sent up\n when the weather is rough, when the clouds are fat and bumpy. The \nturbulent conditions a commercial pilot would avoid are the very ones \nthat a cloudseeding pilot embraces. Or as pilot Mike says: \u201cWe have to \nfly into the dangerous parts of the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s tempting to call them rainmakers, the people who w […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[48,52,77,82],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-update","tag-cloud-seeding","tag-desert","tag-making-rain","tag-naturalised-process"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}