In the summer of 2017, a delegation of visitors from the United Arab Emirates flew to the Berkshire town of Reading.
They had come not for a sightseeing tour but to explore how scientists at the university were making progress on the small matter of controlling the weather.
Earlier that year, the University of Reading was awarded $1.5 million of the $5 million fund allocated by the UAE Rain Enhancement Science Research Programme.
Now members of the UAE program had arrived to observe the first results of a project designed to literally make it rain.
While most Britons would prefer scientists work to stop the rain, drier parts of the world (including the UAE) understandably have other goals.
Accordingly, a five-person team at Reading Meteorological Department is investigating how spraying electrical charges into clouds could cause rain in areas that receive very little rainfall.
The idea of effectively playing the role of God to influence the weather is not new. Already in the UAE and elsewhere, older technology of “cloud seeding”, which involves manipulating existing clouds to help drop more precipitation, is being used.
It usually involves dispersing fine particles such as silver iodide, salt, or dry ice into clouds to help water vapor condense and turn into rain.
The plan, developed by Reading scientists, involves using drones to release an electrical charge into clouds. The university says arid regions such as the Middle East and North Africa could benefit from this.
Although it sounds like science fiction, earlier versions have actually existed since the 1940s; The UAE had been using cloud seeding extensively since the early 2000s.
But this week, the practice has been thrust into the spotlight as record floods bring chaos to Dubai. If cloud cultivation is used to create rain in the UAE, then could this be the reason for the rare downpour in Dubai, where a year’s worth of rain falls in a single day?
The short answer was no; It almost certainly couldn’t happen. “The UAE has an operational cloud seeding program to increase rainfall in this arid part of the world,” said University of Reading meteorologist Prof Maarten Ambaum.
“However, no technology exists that can create or even significantly alter such precipitation events.” He added that no cloud seeding had been done in the area recently and that seeding clouds that are predicted to produce significant amounts of rain would do no good whatsoever.
“ [weather] “The system was identified in our global model, which does not include any input on weather changes.”
says Met Office climate spokesman Grahame Madge.
“So the system was at least naturally occurring.” Planes regularly perform cloud seeding in the generally dry Gulf State, where the mercury can soar to 50°C in the summer. They reportedly use salt material components.
Meanwhile, Reading scientists, led by Prof Giles Harrison, are developing a different technique that allows droplets to which an electric charge is applied to stick together and thus quickly grow large enough to fall as rain. A bespectacled atmospheric physics major, Harrison has a long-standing fascination with the natural sciences and an enthusiasm for testing new ideas.
The technology he and his team developed was tested in the greener countryside of England, not the deserts of the Gulf states. In 2020, the first experiment was carried out at the university’s farm in Sonning, Berkshire, by Harrison’s team together with mechanical and electrical engineers from the University of Bath, where the charge was released into fog using electrical emitters.
Further testing was carried out the following year at Bottom Barn Farm near Castle Cary in Somerset. Here, above a lush landscape rarely affected by drought, drones with specially developed charge emitters that can release positive or negative ions on demand were launched into another foggy sky.
Dr. from Reading. Keri Nicoll later wrote: “It was an important first step in determining whether charging cloud droplets could aid rainfall in water-stressed parts of the world.”
Test flights showed that the droplet size of the fog could be changed by charging, Nicoll said; “This means that it may eventually be possible to use the charge to influence cloud drops and therefore precipitation,” Nicoll wrote.
he said NationalA UAE newspaper said: “What we are doing here is something completely different. “We use very small aircraft, which means things are actually much more cost-effective and we just charge what’s available.”
The promise behind loading droplets or particles was that the technique could work well in conjunction with the existing cloud seeding operation and become more efficient at producing precipitation.
According to the United Nations, approximately 2.3 billion people worldwide live in water-stressed countries, while another 3.2 billion live in agricultural areas with high water scarcity or scarcity.
Reading scientists hope that research into the properties of clouds and precipitation could help prevent conflicts over water in such places and ensure sufficient water for a growing world population.
Reading scientists also conducted field studies examining the effects of desert precipitation and sea breezes in the Gulf, and sent specially instrumented weather balloons through the mists of Abu Dhabi.
The technology they developed has not yet been used operationally. But Ambaum says of its potential future benefits: “Any small improvement in rainfall in arid regions would be valuable.”
In the UAE, it is hoped that this innovation could help the state grow its own crops and produce fresh water.
There is a caveat, though. “Remember that if there are no clouds, you can’t do cloud seeding,” says Ambaum. “This excludes many arid parts of the world.”
While the scientific consensus is that cloud seeding, currently used in the UAE, will not cause floods, are there any other risks associated with the practice? Ambaum recommends not doing this.
It occurs on small space scales (the size of individual convective clouds) and short time scales (cloud microphysical effects take about an hour to occur). “Therefore any intervention is very limited in space or time,” he says.
“This is not a weather change. “We cannot change the evolution or intensity of weather systems… This is also not climate engineering: any effects are limited in time and space.”
Moreover, the concentrations of the materials used for cloud seeding are very low and do not cause any adverse health effects, he adds.
The electrical charge used in the team’s research does not disperse any substances into the environment, and since the drones used to release the charge are powered by batteries, there is no pollution due to the pushing of the aircraft. The released charge dissipates naturally.
“This means that Harrison and his team have developed a more environmentally friendly method of weather modification that can, in principle, operate automatically from multiple locations,” the university says.
As for what caused the flooding in Dubai, it looks like the answer may be more familiar.
Dr D., senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London. “When we talk about heavy rainfall, we also need to talk about climate change,” said Friederike Otto.
“If people continue to burn oil, natural gas and coal, the climate will continue to warm, precipitation will continue to increase, and people will continue to lose their lives in floods.”