In April 2024 the UAE recorded its heaviest rainfall since records began in 1949. Within about
forty-eight hours, a single explanation had gone around the world: the government had made it rain and
lost control.
It is not true. It was denied by the agency responsible within two days, corrected by the meteorologist
originally quoted, and then disproved on physics by twenty-one scientists a week later. It remains, more
than two years on, the first thing most people say about UAE cloud seeding.
Here is what actually happened, where the claim came from, and how the programme really works.
What the weather agency said
Omar AlYazeedi, deputy director general of the National Center of Meteorology, told CNBC in remarks
published on 17 April 2024 that the agency “did not conduct any seeding operations during this event.”
He gave the operational reason, which is more informative than the denial itself:
“One of the basic principles of cloud seeding is that you have to target clouds in its early stage
before it rains, if you have a severe thunderstorm situation then it is too late to conduct any seeding
operation.”
And the safety reason: “We take the safety of our people, pilots, and aircrafts very seriously. The
NCM does not conduct cloud seeding operations during extreme weather events.”
You do not fly small turboprops into a mature thunderstorm. The technique also does not work at that
stage — seeding targets developing cloud, not a storm already dumping rain.
Where the claim actually came from
This sequence matters, because most retellings garble it.
| Step | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1 | Seeding flights were flown in the days before the main storm — reports give six to eight, and the numbers are not reconcilable from open sources |
| 2 | Bloomberg quoted Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist at the NCM, saying the Tuesday rains had stemmed partly from cloud seeding. This single quote is the origin of the global claim |
| 3 | The NCM’s deputy director general denied it, in the terms above |
| 4 | Habib himself then clarified to CNBC that pilots had flown missions as part of regular protocol, but had not seeded any clouds |
So: flights, yes. Seeding of clouds during the storm, no — according to both the agency and, on
correction, the meteorologist whose quote started it. CNBC noted at the time that it was not able to
independently verify the reports, and we carry that caveat too.
We are deliberately not picking a flight number. The public record contains eight, seven and six from
different sources on different days, and the honest statement is that several missions flew in the days
beforehand and the agency says none of them seeded.
The part almost nobody reports
The denial is only half the answer. The other half is that it would not have mattered.
World Weather Attribution published a rapid study by twenty-one scientists on 25 April 2024. Its
conclusion on seeding is worth quoting in full, because the second clause is the one that gets cut:
“cloud seeding was reported to not have been implemented in the context of this event, and
additionally even in case of implementation has no influence on the amount of atmospheric moisture
available, which was the main anomalous variable preceding the precipitation event. Hence, we can
conclude that cloud seeding had no significant influence in the event.”
Seeding cannot manufacture atmospheric moisture. It can only encourage moisture that is already present
to fall sooner or more efficiently. The anomaly in April 2024 was the sheer quantity of moisture in the
atmosphere — something seeding does not and cannot change.
Even if the NCM had seeded, it would not have caused this. That is the argument that settles the
question, and it is stronger than the denial.
What did cause it
The peer-reviewed account, published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, describes an event
fuelled by the interaction of a potential vorticity streamer with an active Red Sea Trough, a powerful
upper-level jet, and the advection of warm, moisture-laden air from a warmer Arabian Sea. World Weather
Attribution traces the system to a low-pressure area originating in mid-latitude Eastern Europe.
Twenty-four-hour rainfall exceeded 250 mm in some areas — the highest since records began in 1949. In
Dubai, most of the rain fell on Monday 15 April and exceeded all previous daily rainfall records in
seventy-five years. Twenty people died in Oman and four in the UAE.
Why it flooded is a separate question from why it rained, and the answer is unflattering to
infrastructure rather than to meteorology. World Weather Attribution points to “a high degree of surfaces
with limited permeability and absorptive capacity from urban developments, inadequate drainage and the
hyper-arid soils”. It also notes that “the heavy rainfall was well forecasted by national meteorological
agencies” — the warning worked; the drainage did not. The peer-reviewed paper found a clear
satellite-observed link between urbanisation, population density and flood severity.
And a second thing that is overstated
The headline that replaced “cloud seeding did it” was “climate change did it, proven”. That is also
more than the science said.
World Weather Attribution found the event 10 to 40% more intense than it would have been in an El Niño
year in a climate 1.2°C cooler — but stated that “the disagreement between model results and observations
prevents us from concluding with certainty that human-induced climate change is the main driver making
this event more likely.” The peer-reviewed follow-up confirms that reading: the authors could not
attribute the event to human-induced climate change. El Niño mattered too — most previous heavy-rain
events in the area occurred in El Niño years.
The same paper does conclude that “anthropogenic climate change is amplifying the frequency of extreme
events like that of 16 April 2024” — a statement about the trend, not about the single storm. The honest
summary is a moisture-loaded system, in a hyper-arid region with almost no drainage, in an El Niño year,
in a warming world.
How UAE seeding actually works
The programme is the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, managed by the National Center
of Meteorology under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It is, at its core, a grant
programme funding international research teams.
| Asset | Detail |
|---|---|
| Aircraft | Four Beechcraft King Air C90s based across the country |
| Weather stations | 75 automatic stations |
| Air quality stations | 8 |
| Dust measurement stations | 34 |
| Radar stations | 6 |
| Ground generators | Flares in mountainous areas; up to several hundred used a year depending on conditions |
The chemistry is the detail that most coverage gets wrong. The UAE does not fire silver iodide into
cold clouds — that is a different technique from a different climate. Its Weather Enhancement Technology
factory, established in 2018, produces 20,000 to 24,000 flares a year in three types: hygroscopic flares
“optimized for warm cloud seeding, using polymer compounds”, nano-enhanced flares, and ground-generator
flares, with a storage life of up to five years. Ground generators exploit terrain and local circulation
to introduce hygroscopic material into orographic cloud, accelerating collision and coalescence.
The same flares are used for hail suppression and fog dispersal, not only rain.
The number we will not print
You will find it stated everywhere that cloud seeding boosts UAE rainfall by somewhere between 10% and
30%. We could not trace that figure to any source you can open — not the programme, not the agency, not a
paper. It is the single most fabricated statistic in this subject, and we are leaving it out rather than
laundering it one more time.
The same applies to mission counts per year and programme costs. What is documented is above: four
aircraft, a flare factory with a stated annual output, and a research programme.
Why this matters beyond the weather
Rain enhancement sits inside a much larger national bet on engineered water and energy security — our
guides to the UAE energy mix,
to Masdar and
to GCC
clean energy investment cover the rest of it, and our guide to
what Masdar City actually
built covers a related case where the headline ambition and the delivered reality diverge.
But the cloud seeding story is really about something else: how fast a single quote, from a real
official, at a real agency, becomes a global fact that outlives its own correction. The denial came within
two days. The physics came within ten. Neither travelled.
Primary sources: the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science on its
cloud
seeding aircraft, its
WET
flare factory, its
ground
generators and
the
programme itself;
World
Weather Attribution’s rapid study; the peer-reviewed analysis in
npj
Climate and Atmospheric Science; and
CNBC’s
report carrying the NCM’s denial, which is the source of record for those statements.
