UAE banks on 'rainmakers' to secure future water supply

On a winter morning in one of the world’s driest and most water-stressed countries, meteorologist Sufian Khaled Farrah watched on the Doppler radar screen as a cold, wet front scudded across the Arabian Gulf - and quickly called air traffic controllers. 

Over the next 15 hours, six twin-engine planes took off from an airfield in Al Ain, on the eastern edge of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and flew repeatedly into the clouds, firing off 162 flares loaded with tiny particles of potassium chloride and sodium chloride, or table salt. By the end of Farrah’s shift at the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology, a light drizzle was falling across much of the UAE. Farrah had made it rain.

With the Gulf region confronting an even hotter, drier future under climate change – potentially testing the limits of human endurance - the UAE’s leadership is hoping to secure the country’s water supply by wringing more moisture out of the clouds.