Watch this cloud-seeding drone' take an experimental flight in Nevada
Flooding in Dubai has been falsely linked to cloud seeding used to promote rain. Cloud seeding is used all around the world including the US, and Australia . READ MORE:As Dubai experiences its worst floods on record, many have been shocked to discover that the country has been working to control the weather for decades.
However, the technique is not without its potential risks - and experts warn that cloud seeding could produce 'catastrophic impacts'. But when researchers added a fine powder of silver iodide - a chemical used in photography - they were amazed to find that the water instantly froze. Johan Jaques, Senior Meteorologist at KISTERS, told MailOnline: 'Cloud seeding is a technique which aims to encourage precipitation in a certain area by introducing chemicals such as silver iodide or sodium particles into clouds.
Specialised planes carry salt flares into promising clouds to trigger water vapour to condense into ice crystalsFamously, the UAE has run a sophisticated cloud seeding programme since the 1990s, flying an estimated 1,000 hours of seeding missions per year.The US, for example, has a very long history of cloud seeding missions beginning in 1947 with Operation Cirrus.
READ MORE: What is cloud seeding? Step-by-step graphic reveals how the weather modification technique works - as experts question whether it was to blame for the Dubai floods Advertisement Research continued throughout the 1960s with Project Skywater which aimed to boost water resources in Western states.In 2018, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado entered into a cost-sharing agreement to fund cloud seeding missions.
At the time Premier Peter Beattie said: 'Cloud seeding is unlikely to be a useful tool Statewide but it could help increase rainfall in specific regions.' Reportedly, this led to '8.56 billion metric tons of additional rainfall' in the Yangtze River basin. READ MORE: Reading University denies its 'cloud-seeding' technology caused Dubai's devastating floods Advertisement The technique is not just used to boost rain - in countries like Spain, France, and Germany, it is mainly used to prevent hail.This organisation uses a network of 650 generators operated by volunteer farmers to trigger precipitation before bigger hailstones can form.
However, Dr Friederike Otto, a leading expert in weather attribution from Imperial College London, told MailOnline that cloud seeding is not to blame. The bigger concern, Dr Otto says, is that cloud seeding is used as a replacement for effective action on climate change which is the real reason rain is becoming more extreme.
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