At the recent International Forum on Increased Rainfall in Abu Dhabi, experts and investors once again discussed the issue of increased rainfall in the UAE. Levon Azizyan, Director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Monitoring SNCO, reported this.

Decades of work and millions of dollars have already been spent on combating persistent drought in the UAE, where the population proliferates despite the dry, harsh climate and summer heat.

Despite the UAE’s efforts, rainfall is rare. In February, at the International Precipitation Improvement Forum in Abu Dhabi, officials discussed a new initiative to use artificial intelligence to identify clouds that can be seeded by aircraft more accurately.

The project, which has been in development for three years, uses satellite, radar, and weather data to create an algorithm that predicts where clouds will form in the next six hours, which can then be seeded with jets to produce rain. Hundreds of flights are flown in the UAE yearly to make artificial rain.

According to official figures, with just 100 millimeters of yearly rainfall, the UAE’s roughly 10 million people rely primarily on desalinated water supplied by factories that produce about 14 percent of the world’s water.

Although UAE officials say measures have increased rainfall, the downpours remain so unusual that schoolchildren clap their hands and rush to their classroom windows to watch the rain. The dry picture was one exception in April 2024, when the heaviest rainfall on record closed Dubai’s largest international airport and flooded roads, paralyzing the city for days.

The UAE has been hosting a Rain Forum since 2017, its seventh in a series of events to find solutions to the drought. The 10-year Rain Enhancement Program has provided $22.5 million in grants.