Meeting Discusses Cloud-seeding

23 March 2010
ABU DHABI - Receding groundwater levels and growing dependency on expensive desalinated water are major concerns for the UAE, said Abdulla Ahmed Al Mandoos, Executive Director of the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology, on Monday.

The impact of droughts, typhoons, sand and dust storms could be reduced if accurate weather and climate forecasts were available, he said in a statement.

His statement was read out at the opening of a three-day meeting on 'Weather modifications in the UAE'. The meeting discussed the method of cloud-seeding to increase the annual rainfall.

Leading scientists from Europe, Russia, Japan, China, Africa, Australia
and North America are attending the meeting, which is also deliberating on methods to increase groundwater levels. Abdul Mohsin Mahmoud, a consultant at the NCMS, said the UAE had two cloud-seeding aircraft with four crew.

There are 59 automatic weather observing systems (AWOS) in the UAE, five weather radars, which are used for cloud-seeding and one upper air station at the Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Al Mandoos said, "There is growing concern about the sustainability of its fresh groundwater resources as levels have declined substantially over this period."

The search for new groundwater resources has met with marginal success as the majority of freshwater for municipal and industrial demand in the UAE is derived from desalinisation of seawater. Globally, nearly 70 countries perform various kinds of weather modification activities such as rainfall enhancement, fog dispersal and hail suppression experiments.

Establishment of five additional seismic measurement stations making it a total of 11 stations in the country.

New seismic stations to be added in northern and eastern parts of the country. Setting up five new automatic weather observing systems (AWOS) for measurement of temperature and humidity.

Installing a new upper air station for measurement of temperature and humidity above 30km in upper layer of sky. One is installed at Abu Dhabi International Increasing rain enhancing activities

By Anwar Ahmad

© Khaleej Times 2010

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