Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of many planet’s driest areas have surprised the world this week. Heavy rains within the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged vehicles, clogged highways and killed no less than 21 folks. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a significant world hub, had been severely disrupted.
The downpours weren’t a freak occasion — forecasters anticipated the storms a number of days out and issued warnings. However they had been definitely uncommon. Right here’s what to know.
Heavy rain there’s uncommon, however not unheard-of.
On common, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few inches of rain a 12 months, though scientists have discovered {that a} sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in rare however extreme bursts, not as periodic showers.
U.A.E. officers mentioned the 24-hour rain whole on Tuesday was the nation’s largest since information there started in 1949. However components of the nation had skilled an earlier spherical of thunderstorms simply final month.
Oman, with its shoreline on the Arabian Sea, can also be weak to tropical cyclones. Previous storms there have introduced torrential rain, highly effective winds and mudslides, inflicting intensive harm.
International warming is projected to accentuate downpours.
Stronger storms are a key consequence of human-caused world warming. Because the environment will get hotter, it may well maintain extra moisture, which might ultimately make its manner right down to the earth as rain or snow.
However that doesn’t imply rainfall patterns are altering in exactly the identical manner throughout each nook of the globe.
Of their newest evaluation of local weather analysis, scientists convened by the United Nations discovered there wasn’t sufficient information to have agency conclusions about rainfall tendencies within the Arabian Peninsula and the way local weather change was affecting them. The researchers mentioned, nonetheless, that if world warming had been to be allowed to proceed worsening within the coming a long time, excessive downpours within the area would fairly doubtless turn into extra intense and extra frequent.
The function of cloud seeding isn’t clear.
The U.A.E. has for many years labored to extend rainfall and enhance water provides by seeding clouds. Basically, this entails taking pictures particles into clouds to encourage the moisture to collect into bigger, heavier droplets, ones which are extra prone to fall as rain or snow.
Cloud seeding and different rain-enhancement strategies have been tried internationally, together with in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa and america. Research have discovered that these operations can, at finest, have an effect on precipitation modestly — sufficient to show a downpour into a much bigger downpour, however most likely not a drizzle right into a deluge.
Nonetheless, consultants mentioned pinning down how a lot seeding might need contributed to this week’s storms would require detailed examine.
“Generally, it’s fairly a problem to evaluate the affect of seeding,” mentioned Luca Delle Monache, a local weather scientist on the Scripps Establishment of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Delle Monache has been main efforts to make use of synthetic intelligence to enhance the U.A.E.’s rain-enhancement program.
An official with the U.A.E.’s Nationwide Middle of Meteorology, Omar Al Yazeedi, advised information retailers this week that the company didn’t conduct any seeding through the newest storms. His statements didn’t clarify, nonetheless, whether or not that was additionally true within the hours or days earlier than.
Mr. Al Yazeedi didn’t reply to emailed questions from The New York Instances on Thursday, and Adel Kamal, a spokesman for the middle, didn’t instantly have additional remark.
Cities in dry locations simply aren’t designed for floods.
Wherever it occurs, flooding isn’t only a matter of how a lot rain comes down. It’s additionally about what occurs to all that water as soon as it’s on the bottom — most critically, within the locations folks stay.
Cities in arid areas typically aren’t designed to empty very successfully. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth under, forcing it into drainage techniques that may simply turn into overwhelmed.
One latest examine of Sharjah, the capital of the third-largest emirate within the U.A.E., discovered that town’s fast progress over the previous half century had made it weak to flooding at far decrease ranges of rain than earlier than.
Omnia Al Desoukie contributed reporting.
