Opinion
Dubai's black-swan flood: Climate change is a suspect
Summary
- The city got as much rainfall in two days as it usually gets in a year-and-a-half. What’s to blame: Cloud seeding or global warming?
News of flooding in arid Dubai might sound odd, but it happened in spectacular fashion on Tuesday. Large parts of this gleaming UAE city of glass-and-steel skyscrapers were left submerged by a severe downpour. Dubai received 142 millimetres of rainfall in the first two days of this week, about as much as it usually gets in a year-and-a-half.
It was a black-swan event, weather wise, and so it understandably brought even such an expensively appointed city to a standstill as its drainage systems got overwhelmed. The deluge has been pinned on a large storm system over this part of the Gulf region. To its east, in Oman, 18 people are reported to have lost their lives. Beyond proximate changes in heat, evaporation and air-pressure, apart from the region’s cloud-seeding exercises that some observers suspect played a role, what caused this flood needs scientific study.
Climate change should also be held in suspicion as a big factor. The correlation between global warming and freak weather events of rising severity is hard to overlook. If off-the-charts storms are set to increase around the world, we need to worry about disruptions that might be too late to stop through climate action.
