Floodwaters have inundated a number of roads in Saudi Arabia in a new wave of heavy rains to hit the Gulf desert region, and earlier it lashed the Emirates after record floods disrupted life in several areas in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
Experts confirm that the specific level of water in the Gulf is a direct result of climate change, and that it could get worse in the coming years as the Earth’s temperature continues to rise.
The National Meteorological Center announced that the UAE saw the highest amounts of rain in the past 75 years, and that the “Khatm al-Shakla” area in Al Ain was the saw 254.8 mm of precipitation in less than 24 hours… a country achieving a unique event recorded in its climate history.
NASA publishes satellite images of the Emirates before and after the floods
A slow-moving storm system hit the UAE, dropping more than a year’s worth of rain on some cities in April 2024.
Rain fell at a rate of 100 mm over just 12 hours last week, which is close to what Dubai usually records for an entire year, according to CNN, citing United Nations data.
After the extremely heavy rains caused great chaos in Dubai, Bloomberg talked about a place for water filtration work here, while the government of Dubai denied that they carried out water filtration work before those floods.
Tracking rain seeding planes.. Did cloud seeding cause floods in the Emirates?
The UAE government has denied reports that cloud seeding was the cause behind the heavy rains the country has seen over the past two days, which have led to massive flooding.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Associated Press that three low-pressure systems were forming a train of storms moving slowly down the jet stream toward the Arabian Peninsula.
The strong low pressure system brought several rounds of strong winds and heavy rain to the northern and eastern parts of the UAE.
Climate change
Scientists and meteorologists attribute the severity of the storm to a lot of moisture that rises in the atmosphere from an increase in the temperature of the sea before it falls in the form of rain on the Arabian Peninsula.
Climatologist, Mohamed Benabo, says that the increase in the temperature of the planet and the continued use of fossil fuels for energy production increase climate change and therefore the possibility of heavy rain in different regions of the world.
In an interview with the Al-Hurra website, Benabou explains that the temperature recorded in the last 12 months is the highest in history, that is, since temperature measurement began on the planet
He believes that the special waters in the Emirates, Sultanate of Oman, and Saudi Arabia are the result of these climate changes that are occurring, in addition to the fact that these countries are the most productive of fossil fuels.
Benabo says that climate changes this year coincided with the El Niño phenomenon, which had a noticeable effect in a group of regions of the world, including the Gulf region.
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155 people died in Tanzania due to heavy rains linked to the El Niño climate phenomenon, which caused floods and landslides, while several countries in East Africa recorded above-average rainfall recently weeks.
The expert believes that the continuous increase in the Earth’s temperature and climate changes will make phenomena such as rain more deadly, and that the risk and intensity could increase in the coming years if the temperature of the planet does not decrease.
In fact, the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman are suffering from extreme heat due to climate warming. But last week’s floods revealed an additional threat from severe weather as the planet warms.
Sonia Seneviratne, a member of the network and a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said: “The floods in the UAE and Oman showed that heavy rain can affect even dry areas, a growing risk with heavy rain. increase in climate warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.”
The World Weather Reference Network, on Thursday, announced that climate warming caused by fossil fuel emissions was “most likely” behind the record rainfall that hit the deserts of the Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman last week.
After the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman, the phenomenon spread to Saudi Arabia, where torrential rains flooded a large number of roads, forcing the authorities of the Kingdom, on Wednesday, to close schools in several regions.
Video clips from Agence France-Presse showed cars partially submerged, trying to make their way through water lakes in the region of Qassim (main Kingdom), which has a population of more than five million people, knowing that this is one of the areas where there was heavy rain on Tuesday.
The National Meteorological Center issued a “red alert” for the Qassim region and several other regions, including the eastern region overlooking the Arabian Gulf, the capital, Riyadh, and the Medina region near the Red Sea in the west.
The government center warned of “heavy rain accompanied by high winds, lack of horizontal visibility, fog, flowing streams, and thunder” in these areas.
This week’s heavy rain in Saudi Arabia comes as a result of extreme storms that hit the Gulf region in the middle of last month, killing 21 people in Oman and four in the UAE , which recorded the most rainfall in 75 years.
An expert team of scientists said in a study published last week that global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions is “most likely” behind the record rainfall that hit the region.
2024-05-01 16:29:27
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