Heavy rains lashed Dubai late on Monday night and continued on Tuesday, April 16, submerging its major highways and international airport.
The heavy rainfall prompted the UAE government to issue warnings urging employees to work from home and only leave “in cases of extreme necessity.” All federal employees have been asked to work remotely until Wednesday.
The wet spell resulted in the suspension of operations at the Dubai airport in the afternoon before resuming 25 minutes later. AP reported the city's meteorological data recorded a year and a half's worth of rain within a day.
The heavy showers that disrupted life in Dubai city were associated with a larger storm system traversing the Arabian Peninsula and moving across the Gulf of Oman, CNN reported.
Heavy rains were also reported in neighbouring Oman and southeastern Iran. Recently, heavy rains in Oman caused severe flooding in the region, and resulted in the loss of 18 lives.
Friederike Otto, a leader in the field of assessing the role of climate change on specific extreme weather events, however, also attributed global warming as the trigger behind the unusual rainfall.
A climatologist and Professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Otto said, "It is highly likely that the deadly and destructive rain in Oman and Dubai was made heavier by human-caused climate change," AFP reported.
A Bloomberg report attributed the heavy rains to cloud seeding, a process in which chemicals and tiny particles are implanted into the atmosphere to coax more rain from clouds. The United Arab Emirates resorted to cloud seeding technique in 2002 in a bid to address water security issues.
Bloomberg quoted Specialist meteorologist Ahmed Habib as saying seeding planes carried out seven missions over the past two days, indicating that this could also be an immediate trigger.
