I MORNING BRIEFING: WHAT CAUSED THE EXTREME DUBAI DOWNPOUR?
Welcome to Thursday’s Early Edition from i.
The time lapse footage shows heavy dark clouds gathering and rolling over the sky-scraper studded desert city, before thick, relentless drops of rain obscure the entire view. Cars are seen floating down highways, planes surrounded by rising waters, bringing chaos to the world’s second busiest airport. The shocking scenes broadcast around the world yesterday were the result of the heaviest rainfall in 75 years to hit Dubai, and surrounding Gulf States. Neighbouring Oman has borne the brunt of the death toll, where 19 people are said to have died so far. When extreme and unusual weather events around the world hit questions are usually directed at one culprit – climate change. But this time another phrase began doing the rounds as clips of the downpour went viral – “cloud seeding”. It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but could the weather modification practice have had any effect? We’ll take a look, after the headlines.
Today’s news, and why it matters
Brexit is fueling UK shortages of life-saving drugs such as antibiotics and epilepsy medication following a “shock rise” in global supply problems, a think-tank has warned. Researchers at The Nuffield Trust urged the Government to carry out a review of the UK’s “broken” medicine supply chain after finding the impact of leaving the European Union (EU) has worsened the issue in recent years.
The Government is facing increasing cross-party demands to shut down the UK operations of two Iranian state-owned banks accused of funneling cash to Tehran’s proxy militias and helping to fund the regime’s foreign policy. Dame Margaret Hodge, a senior Labour MP and leader of a Parliamentary taskforce on corruption, told i that it was “utterly depressing” that the two financial institutions – Melli Bank and Bank Saderat – continue to run subsidiaries in London despite their history of being named in Western sanctions regimes.
Crumbling Blue Wall: The councils where Tories are bracing for a ‘pasting’. Local elections next month will shed light on whether the Conservatives really are as far behind as opinion polls suggest,
A Tory MP has relinquished the party whip after an investigation was launched following claims he misused campaign funds. Mark Menzies also faced allegations he made a late-night call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by “bad people” demanding thousands of pounds for his release.
Smoking rates among middle and upper-class women under the age of 45 are rising, according to a study which suggests the high cost of cigarettes is failing to deter them. While smoking rates have fallen among working-class women in England, they appear to have jumped in more advantaged groups.
Fossils discovered by an 11-year-old girl on a beach in Somerset may have come from the largest marine reptile ever to have lived, experts say. The team have named the species Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning “giant fish lizard of the Severn”, which could have been about 25 metres in length – about the size of a blue whale.
Three questions on the UAE’s historic floods:
Why are people asking about cloud seeding? It is no secret that the United Arab Emirates, like other drought-stricken regions such as part of the US, Asia and the Middle East, use cloud seeding in the hope of generating rain. A study in NSW, Australia, showed a five-year cloud seeding project resulted in a 14% increase in snowfall. In the US, the Bureau of Reclamation spent $2.4m last year on seeding along the Colorado River, and Utah, which says it increased its water supply by 12% in 2018, recently increased its budget for the technique by tenfold. However the practice remains controversial due to a lack of strong evidence that it really works. “How do you know how much precipitation that might actually end up falling from that cloud occurred due to the seeding? Or how much would have fallen without the seeding?” Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA, told CNN. “This isn’t a setting where you can do a truly controlled experiment.” Although first discovered in the 1940s, the UAE has been using the practice since the 1990s, and it now conducts one of the world’s most extensive programmes, with more than 1,000 hours of cloud seeding carried out annually. However the UAE’s National Center of Metereology has denied reports that carried out the technique in the lead up to this week’s storm.
What is cloud seeding? The practice is an attempt at weather modification that involves identifying suitable clouds for small planes to fly through, which inject a chemical agent that increases precipitation. That agent is usually a compound called silver iodide, which exists naturally and has not been shown to have a harmful effect on humans or wildlife. The particles must be shot into a rain cloud that already holds moisture to get it to fall, or to fall more than it otherwise would naturally. But it’s unlikely that cloud seeding could have created the kind of storm which hit the Gulf states on Tuesday. “It’s maybe a little bit of a human conceit that, yeah, we can control the weather in like a Star Trek sense,” meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press. “Maybe on long time scales, climate time scales, we’re affecting the atmosphere on long time scales. But when it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai.”
So what caused it then? “One thing we do know is that heavy storms in general have become more frequent in many regions around the globe due to climate change… a warmer atmosphere can hold more water and so it seems likely that that might be related,” Dr Edward Gryspeerdt, research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, told i. Professor Maarten Ambaum, a meteorologist at the University of Reading said the storms appear to be the result of what is known as a “mesoscale convective system”, a series of medium-sized thunderstorms caused by massive thunderclouds, formed as heat draws moisture up into the atmosphere. “These types of intense rainfall events can be made more extreme due to climate change… Climate scientists have been warning for many years that such extreme events will become more likely in a warmer climate and, indeed, we see this happening around us now.” Read the full story here. In addition, Tuesday’s floods are not “rare events for the Middle East,” according to University of Reading meteorology professor Suzanne Gray. She referred to a study analysing nearly 100 such events over the southern Arabian Peninsula from 2000 to 2020, with most in March and April, including a March 2016 storm that dropped almost 24 cm Dubai in just a few hours. That study, published in 2021, said “a statistically significant increase in the (whopper storms) duration over southeast Arabian Peninsula has been found, suggesting that such extreme events may be even more impactful in a warming world.”
Around the world
Israel is considering launching an attack on Iran‘s nuclear sites in revenge for its weekend assault as the US and UK scramble to put together a diplomatic response which could include reviving the deal to restrain Tehran from building a nuclear bomb. Benjamin Netanyahu’s next military move against Iran may not come until later this month, according to senior Israeli officials.
A Boeing whistleblower told a senate hearing that he faced threats and verbal abuse after voicing safety concerns about the aircraft manufacturer. Quality engineer Sam Salehpour appeared before the senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations on Wednesday, one of two hearings looking into Boeing following a mid-air cabin panel blowout in January.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated after Indonesia’s Mount Ruang erupted for a second day, triggered by recent earthquakes. The eruption pushed a column of ash up to 2.5km into the sky.
The more you use your brain at work, the less likely you are to have memory loss or cognitive issues in later life, a study suggests. New research found that people who do mentally stimulating jobs, such as teaching, were 66 per cent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment and dementia in retirement than those with the least mentally challenging roles, such as postal workers and caretakers.
US right says Liz Truss’s impact will be limited as venue declines to host book tour. The former prime minister has launched her book in the US, but Americans say she lacks the recognition to be useful to Donald Trump.
Watch out for…
Prince William, who resumes official duties today for the first time since Kate Middleton revealed her cancer diagnosis. He is set to visit a food distribution charity in Surrey.
Thoughts for the day
Nigel Farage is the worst of us, but he has a right to speak. Fighting populism cannot be done with bans, says Ian Dunt.
Call the violent targeting of women what it is: a terror attack. The attacks at a shopping centre in Sydney were not, apparently, ‘an act of terrorism’, because there was ‘no ideological motivation’, writes Kate Maltby.
For three decades, I hid my feelings with booze. Now I’ve bought a Peloton. This country has drilled into me one simple principle: life is hard – now shut up and drink your way through it, reveals Rufus Hound.
Culture Break
Persephone: How ‘middlebrow’ women’s books were brought back from the dead. Now marking its 25th birthday, the imprint’s stylish reissues of neglected works by women has built a devoted following – and sparked a boom in heritage publishing.
The Big Read
I’ve seen Iran’s nuclear HQ – these are the risks if Israel tries to destroy it. The fortified Natanz uranium enrichment facility is thought to be a top target if Israel attacks Iran, writes Rob Hastings.
Sport
Real Madrid end Man City’s back-to-back treble dream after shootout drama. City lose their first-ever Champions League penalty shootout as 14-time Real Madrid progress to the semi-finals.
Something to brighten your day
I’m a beautician – here’s what I’d never do, and why you should wear SPF on planes. There are skincare steps that even Kazia Pelka’s most regular clients still get wrong, writes Eleanor Peake.
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