The UAE began to test the rain challenge using artificial lightning or nanotechnology

In a fresh interview, the head of the National Center for Meteorology of the UAE (NCM) Abdulla Al Mandous said that two promising artificial precipitation technologies are experiencing in the Emirates. One of them implies the use of nanotechnologies for sowing clouds, and the other – the installation of electric discharge on the wings of aircraft or drones. The desalination costs 25 times more than promising technologies and should give way to rainwater.

Image source: AI generation Kandinsky 3.1/3DNews

Like many countries of the Middle East, the UAE largely depend on the desalination of water to satisfy its growing needs. The creation of desalinatives on the required scale seems to be an extremely cost event that you have to go to until there are no other working alternatives. Such an alternative can be an artificial draft (rain). However, today this process is carried out by spraying in the air of salt reagents, which can lead to negative consequences, such as soil salinization.

The calculations show that the use of nanoparticles instead of salts allows you to three times increase the efficiency of precipitation, all other things being equal. Moreover, the use of electrostatic methods consisting of the formation of drops using electric discharges created by the discharge installed on the wings of aircraft or drones can increase the efficiency of precipitation by nine times compared to salts of clouds of salts.

The first such experiment was conducted in the summer of 2021, and it turned out to be successful, causing heavy rain precipitation. However, the emirates are not yet ready for the mass use of such technologies. Heavy rainfall in 2024 in Dubai literally paralyzed the movement in the city in which there is historically no storm sewer. The head of the NCM admits that the UAE infrastructure – from urban to reservoirs – is not ready for abundant rains. There is still a lot of work to seriously talk about regular precipitation. Finally, it is not yet clear which technology to give preference.