I can offer my own personal experience of being in the UAE in February 1982 or 1983. I attended a week long conference in Dubai, which ended with a number of us heading by bus over to Khor Fakkan on the Fujairah coast - about 80 miles away - supposedly for some R&R and paragliding, surfing etc. The rain started more or less as we left Dubai, but it became really heavy after we struck out across the desert from Sharjah, slowing the journey. You could occasionally making out a wellhead flare through the sheets of rain. We got to Khor Fakkan for a late lunch in the top floor restaurant of the Holiday Inn: I have photos of the globe light fittings half filled with water like goldfish bowls because the roof leaked. After lunch the esplanade was completely submerged, and cars found it impassible. It was decided that those with flights to catch needed to get back if at all possible, and we set off in our trusty Bedford bus. Passing through the mountains we came to a bridge over a wadi - at least, it had been a bridge in the morning, but now was submerged by the torrent. The bus driver was dubious, but a large bulk load truck made it across, so he followed and we got through. The road across the desert was by now frequently under several inches of water, and the going was very slow: we made Sharjah by about 10p.m. to find that all the underpasses were completely flooded and most roads had turned into canals. The driver stopped for a comfort break at the edge of the massive deserted Souk car park, which had become a lake, reflecting the lights of the Souk like a surreal scene from the Arabian Nights.
Old Gulf hands said they hadn't seen anything like it for at least 30 years. Dubai itself was not as badly affected, but was still very wet: I had difficulty securing a taxi to take me to DXB for my flight to Paris (a 747 refuelling in the middle of the night from Singapore) which was probably the worst flight at the front of an aircraft I have ever had, with the nose constantly buffeted from side to side by the turbulence which stretched until we got to the Med.
The event was certainly extremely similar to the recent one, including the extent of the storm, even if it was less severe in Dubai itself. Such storms appear to occur once every few decades, and are not novel.
Wow, thank you so much for that riveting personal account and for the observations of those 'old hands'. The UAE cloud seeding project officially got underway in 2009, so if they were tinkering with experimental flights way back in 82/83, it seems highly unlikely that such experiments would have resulted in the very widespread storm system and extremely heavy rains which you witnessed at first hand. It also brings into serious question the competing claim that 'climate change' is responsible, if such heavy rains last happened 30 years prior to 1982, at the beginning of the 1950s when global GHG emissions were tiny compared to today.
I worked in Dubai for 18 years as a civil and structural engineer and Dubai suffers from two problems regarding drainage, namely:
a. A large part of Dubai is at or below sea level, which makes it difficult to drain. Furthermore, pumped drainage can be overwhelmed by heavy rainfall.
b. Non-pumped drainage tends to get filled up with silty sand because most of the time the weather is dry. However, when it does rain the silt expands on contact with water and it then tends to block the drains, thus rendering them to be nearly useless. The only drains that can usually function properly are those in item (a) above that are below the water table in tunnels, etc., because these drains are working 24/7.
I suggest that (for the above reasons) the drainage system did not work properly and consequently could not cope with the large amount of rainfall from what is a rare, but not unusual, weather event.
Good to hear from an actual engineer Angus, with direct experience of the Dubai drainage system. Your comments prove that the FLOODING was almost certainly attributable to the lack of adequate drainage and that the intense rainfall, though exceptional, was not unprecedented in the 75 year record, which brings into doubt any attempt to attribute the rainfall either to 'climate change' or cloud seeding.
Yep, it's turning into a real bun-fight between climate crisis cultists and 'deniers':
"Many of the people pointing to cloud seeding are also climate change deniers who are trying to divert attention from what's really happening, Mann and other scientists said."
"When we talk about heavy rainfall, we need to talk about climate change. Focusing on cloud seeding is misleading," said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads a team that does rapid attribution of weather extremes to see if they were caused by global warming or not. "Rainfall is becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture."
GOOD GRIEF! People losing their heads all the time, desperate to prove or disprove their pet theories. Just examine the evidence! THEN voice a calm, considered opinion based on the weight of that evidence.
Now I'm going to have to spend hours trawling through the literature cited in defence of cloud seeding, plus an extra few minutes dismissing the ridiculous assertions of the climate change fanatics!
This is going to prove to be even more contentious than I thought: Judith Curry and Matt Ridley have now joined the ranks of the cloud-seeding convinced.
Besides the rational skepticism regarding "cloud seeding" you provided, why have all the previous cloud seeding projects failed to produce any such over the top response? I guess one must read their perspective.
Jaime, in the course of your research, what have you seen as the most common/top/primary evidence put forward by those claiming there is human related CO2 emissions driven global warming? I'm trying to determine what might be best to focus on to challenge their claim.
That's the nub. Because cc therfore any times there's more rain it's cc. Therefore all rain = cc, except when there's a drought cos that's also cc.
You could go back and go through Symons's British Rainfall reports (1860 - 1899) find an anomalous event and apply the same quotes (7% more water, its what we're expect blah blah). Is there any event they cannot claim? It's rather like the absurd character Mr. Everything Comes From India from the 90s show Goodness Gracious Me who claimed "William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, most English words, the British royal family, Superman and even Jesus came from India."
That is The Science™️. There is no normal weather any more and obviously our ancestors never had it so good lmfao.
As Ben Pile would say that's how we can know that Climate Change is bullshit even if it's real
All you need to know is that as a result of the logarithmic relationship between CO2 concentration and its ability to reduce the rate of heat loss, increasing CO2 concentration at current levels is effectively saturated, therefore incapable of significant further effects.
This paper - albeit somewhat technical - explains it.
"Abstract
The radiative forcing from carbon dioxide is approximately logarithmic in its concentration, producing about 4 W m−2 of global-mean forcing for each doubling. Although these are basic facts of climate science, competing explanations for them have been given in the literature. Here, the reasons for the logarithmic forcing of carbon dioxide are explored in detail and a simplified model for the forcing is constructed. An essential component is the particular distribution of absorption coefficients within the 15-μm band of carbon dioxide. An alternative explanation, which does not depend on the spectrum of carbon dioxide but instead hinges on the tropospheric lapse rate, is shown to be neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the logarithmic forcing of carbon dioxide and to be generally inapplicable to well-mixed greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere."
John, the ENTIRE basis of the claim that human emissions are causing global warming rests on two aspects of the 'science.' ALL of the other supposed 'evidence' cited in defence of GHG-driven warming - melting ice/glaciers, rising sea level, extreme weather events, even the observed 'unprecedented' increase in global mean surface temperature - is secondary to the following:
1. The so called 'Detection and Attribution' studies cited by the UN IPCC
2. Climate modelling runs performed with and without anthropogenic forcings, including known natural forcings.
It's a complex subject but when you dig deep into the 'science' and the long list of assumptions behind the 'science', you realise that the whole structural edifice of 'man-made global warming' is built upon very shaky foundations indeed.
I made a number of comments on my findings there, which basically concluded that the process is designed to produce the desired result - for detail see the link. I would add that I also looked at the Philip et al. 2020 paper available here:
I've looked briefly at the Dubai floods attribution. There is quite a large difference in the return time calculated using ERA5 and the other dataset. Also, the climate models comprehensively fail to simulate the observed trend, dubious as that is.
Great balanced article, another factor that doesn't get mentioned much is human intervention in natural drainage and water flow when we do get heavy rains. With more and more building on natural flood plains etc and where water would have usually flowed diverted by buildings, we see what looks like a more catastrophic result of heavy rain.
Especially for you;https://jowaller.substack.com/p/glad-to-see-so-many-holding-the-party
Especially for you; https://jowaller.substack.com/p/glad-to-see-so-many-holding-the-party
I can offer my own personal experience of being in the UAE in February 1982 or 1983. I attended a week long conference in Dubai, which ended with a number of us heading by bus over to Khor Fakkan on the Fujairah coast - about 80 miles away - supposedly for some R&R and paragliding, surfing etc. The rain started more or less as we left Dubai, but it became really heavy after we struck out across the desert from Sharjah, slowing the journey. You could occasionally making out a wellhead flare through the sheets of rain. We got to Khor Fakkan for a late lunch in the top floor restaurant of the Holiday Inn: I have photos of the globe light fittings half filled with water like goldfish bowls because the roof leaked. After lunch the esplanade was completely submerged, and cars found it impassible. It was decided that those with flights to catch needed to get back if at all possible, and we set off in our trusty Bedford bus. Passing through the mountains we came to a bridge over a wadi - at least, it had been a bridge in the morning, but now was submerged by the torrent. The bus driver was dubious, but a large bulk load truck made it across, so he followed and we got through. The road across the desert was by now frequently under several inches of water, and the going was very slow: we made Sharjah by about 10p.m. to find that all the underpasses were completely flooded and most roads had turned into canals. The driver stopped for a comfort break at the edge of the massive deserted Souk car park, which had become a lake, reflecting the lights of the Souk like a surreal scene from the Arabian Nights.
Old Gulf hands said they hadn't seen anything like it for at least 30 years. Dubai itself was not as badly affected, but was still very wet: I had difficulty securing a taxi to take me to DXB for my flight to Paris (a 747 refuelling in the middle of the night from Singapore) which was probably the worst flight at the front of an aircraft I have ever had, with the nose constantly buffeted from side to side by the turbulence which stretched until we got to the Med.
The event was certainly extremely similar to the recent one, including the extent of the storm, even if it was less severe in Dubai itself. Such storms appear to occur once every few decades, and are not novel.
Wow, thank you so much for that riveting personal account and for the observations of those 'old hands'. The UAE cloud seeding project officially got underway in 2009, so if they were tinkering with experimental flights way back in 82/83, it seems highly unlikely that such experiments would have resulted in the very widespread storm system and extremely heavy rains which you witnessed at first hand. It also brings into serious question the competing claim that 'climate change' is responsible, if such heavy rains last happened 30 years prior to 1982, at the beginning of the 1950s when global GHG emissions were tiny compared to today.
I hope you spotted my other comment.
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/dubai-flooding-geoengineering-vs/comment/54659098
Jaime
I worked in Dubai for 18 years as a civil and structural engineer and Dubai suffers from two problems regarding drainage, namely:
a. A large part of Dubai is at or below sea level, which makes it difficult to drain. Furthermore, pumped drainage can be overwhelmed by heavy rainfall.
b. Non-pumped drainage tends to get filled up with silty sand because most of the time the weather is dry. However, when it does rain the silt expands on contact with water and it then tends to block the drains, thus rendering them to be nearly useless. The only drains that can usually function properly are those in item (a) above that are below the water table in tunnels, etc., because these drains are working 24/7.
I suggest that (for the above reasons) the drainage system did not work properly and consequently could not cope with the large amount of rainfall from what is a rare, but not unusual, weather event.
Good to hear from an actual engineer Angus, with direct experience of the Dubai drainage system. Your comments prove that the FLOODING was almost certainly attributable to the lack of adequate drainage and that the intense rainfall, though exceptional, was not unprecedented in the 75 year record, which brings into doubt any attempt to attribute the rainfall either to 'climate change' or cloud seeding.
Yep, it's turning into a real bun-fight between climate crisis cultists and 'deniers':
"Many of the people pointing to cloud seeding are also climate change deniers who are trying to divert attention from what's really happening, Mann and other scientists said."
"When we talk about heavy rainfall, we need to talk about climate change. Focusing on cloud seeding is misleading," said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads a team that does rapid attribution of weather extremes to see if they were caused by global warming or not. "Rainfall is becoming much heavier around the world as the climate warms because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture."
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-experts-dont-cloud-seeding-played.html
GOOD GRIEF! People losing their heads all the time, desperate to prove or disprove their pet theories. Just examine the evidence! THEN voice a calm, considered opinion based on the weight of that evidence.
Now I'm going to have to spend hours trawling through the literature cited in defence of cloud seeding, plus an extra few minutes dismissing the ridiculous assertions of the climate change fanatics!
AlJazeera's take:
"Did cloud seeding cause Dubai floods? Why experts say no"
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/18/was-cloud-seeding-responsible-for-the-floodings-in-dubai#:~:text=Cloud%20seeding%20uses%20planes%20and,Earth%20as%20rain%20or%20snow.
Yep, just waiting for those same 'experts' to debunk the theory that it was global warming which caused this flooding . . . . . . .
This is going to prove to be even more contentious than I thought: Judith Curry and Matt Ridley have now joined the ranks of the cloud-seeding convinced.
https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/1780833831144100207
https://twitter.com/curryja/status/1780607123992506545
Besides the rational skepticism regarding "cloud seeding" you provided, why have all the previous cloud seeding projects failed to produce any such over the top response? I guess one must read their perspective.
Hmm... the media has gone from weather manipulation is a crazy conspiracy theory to cloud seeding is an every day thing then....
Jaime, in the course of your research, what have you seen as the most common/top/primary evidence put forward by those claiming there is human related CO2 emissions driven global warming? I'm trying to determine what might be best to focus on to challenge their claim.
I think you'll find it's a variation of this quote which I've seen wheeled out for the UK rainfall and for the Gulf.
"Put simply: warmer air can hold more moisture - about 7% extra for every degree Celsius - which can in turn increase the intensity of rain."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68839043
That's the nub. Because cc therfore any times there's more rain it's cc. Therefore all rain = cc, except when there's a drought cos that's also cc.
You could go back and go through Symons's British Rainfall reports (1860 - 1899) find an anomalous event and apply the same quotes (7% more water, its what we're expect blah blah). Is there any event they cannot claim? It's rather like the absurd character Mr. Everything Comes From India from the 90s show Goodness Gracious Me who claimed "William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, most English words, the British royal family, Superman and even Jesus came from India."
That is The Science™️. There is no normal weather any more and obviously our ancestors never had it so good lmfao.
As Ben Pile would say that's how we can know that Climate Change is bullshit even if it's real
All you need to know is that as a result of the logarithmic relationship between CO2 concentration and its ability to reduce the rate of heat loss, increasing CO2 concentration at current levels is effectively saturated, therefore incapable of significant further effects.
This paper - albeit somewhat technical - explains it.
"Abstract
The radiative forcing from carbon dioxide is approximately logarithmic in its concentration, producing about 4 W m−2 of global-mean forcing for each doubling. Although these are basic facts of climate science, competing explanations for them have been given in the literature. Here, the reasons for the logarithmic forcing of carbon dioxide are explored in detail and a simplified model for the forcing is constructed. An essential component is the particular distribution of absorption coefficients within the 15-μm band of carbon dioxide. An alternative explanation, which does not depend on the spectrum of carbon dioxide but instead hinges on the tropospheric lapse rate, is shown to be neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the logarithmic forcing of carbon dioxide and to be generally inapplicable to well-mixed greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere."
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/13/JCLI-D-21-0275.1.xml#:~:text=The%20radiative%20forcing%20from%20carbon,been%20given%20in%20the%20literature.
John, the ENTIRE basis of the claim that human emissions are causing global warming rests on two aspects of the 'science.' ALL of the other supposed 'evidence' cited in defence of GHG-driven warming - melting ice/glaciers, rising sea level, extreme weather events, even the observed 'unprecedented' increase in global mean surface temperature - is secondary to the following:
1. The so called 'Detection and Attribution' studies cited by the UN IPCC
2. Climate modelling runs performed with and without anthropogenic forcings, including known natural forcings.
It's a complex subject but when you dig deep into the 'science' and the long list of assumptions behind the 'science', you realise that the whole structural edifice of 'man-made global warming' is built upon very shaky foundations indeed.
I looked into the attribution study for this event:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/04/18/they-never-used-to-have-heatwaves-in-mali/
I made a number of comments on my findings there, which basically concluded that the process is designed to produce the desired result - for detail see the link. I would add that I also looked at the Philip et al. 2020 paper available here:
https://ascmo.copernicus.org/articles/6/177/2020/ascmo-6-177-2020.pdf
It's basically a cookbook on how to cook the books.
I've looked briefly at the Dubai floods attribution. There is quite a large difference in the return time calculated using ERA5 and the other dataset. Also, the climate models comprehensively fail to simulate the observed trend, dubious as that is.
John, you may find my brief summary on CAGW here useful. (brief in the snse that it is an excellent overview of the the main claims, failures, and polatics) https://anderdaa7.substack.com/p/global-warming?r=slvym
That would be interesting to know.
Great balanced article, another factor that doesn't get mentioned much is human intervention in natural drainage and water flow when we do get heavy rains. With more and more building on natural flood plains etc and where water would have usually flowed diverted by buildings, we see what looks like a more catastrophic result of heavy rain.