From ClimateREALISM
An article written by Andrew Freedman, titled “Dubai’s record-shattering “rain bomb” has clear climate change ties,” published April 17th, in the online news website AXIOS makes the claim that record rainfall received in one day in the city of Dubai United Arab Emirates (UAE), has a clear connection to climate change. This is false. Not only is AXIOS conflating weather events with long term climate change, other evidence suggests this was little more than a rare weather event, which has happened before according to weather history for the area, and weak city drainage infrastructure was unable to handle the excess water.
The article notes the heavy rainfall and poor drainage stating:
- At least two years’ worth of rain, or about 6.26 inches, fell in just 24 hours, qualifying as what have come to be known colloquially as “rain bombs” for their ultra-heavy totals in such short periods of time.
- This amount of rainfall in a single day would cause problems even in more temperate locations, let alone Dubai, a desert city with poor drainage.
With over 6 inches of rain in a short time in a desert city that is not known for having infrastructure designed for large amounts of rain, it is not at all surprising that the drainage infrastructure could not handle an event like this, leading to street flooding. Freedman’s article goes on to say that the heavy rainfall event was forecasted by weather models:
The proximate cause of the flooding was a slow-moving and potent area of low pressure, or cold pocket of air aloft, that sparked complexes of severe thunderstorms over the United Arab Emirates and nearby countries on Tuesday.
This storm system, along with the threat of heavy rainfall, was shown by weather models several days in advance.
That is certainly true, for example in Figure 1 below, the ECMWF weather model output for April 16th shows significant rainfall for the area, with forecast color zones in excess of 6 inches.
Since the forecast showed significant rain over the area, UAE’s cloud seeding program apparently was put into action according to this article on Newsable:
Since the 1990s, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been actively engaged in cloud seeding efforts, overseen by the National Center of Meteorology (NCM). This government agency manages the country’s Rain Enhancement Program, utilizing a network of numerous weather stations to closely monitor atmospheric conditions for seeding operations.
Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist at NCM, revealed to Bloomberg that seeding planes conducted seven missions over two days leading up to the heavy rainfall that inundated parts of the desert nation.
It seems like a simple case of a rare and intense short-term rainfall event, possibly juiced by cloud seeding. Since short-term weather models were used to forecast it, climate does not enter the picture. Long-term climate models could not have forecasted such an event because it is well below their time-scale of years to decades ahead.
Where Freedman’s article goes off the rails is with this claim:
Instead, climate science studies and observations around the world show that extreme rainfall events like this, including ones that break all-time records, are becoming more common and severe as the planet warms.
Moisture from the warm Persian Gulf fed into the thunderstorms in this case.
In fact, increased hydrological extremes, in both the form of drought and heavy rains, are one of the most robust ties to human-caused climate change, which is reshaping global weather patterns.
Freedman’s conflation of a single day weather event with long-term climate is his first error. Weather is not climate. Further, his claim on hydrological extremes is baseless, because the latest scientific report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows clearly that there is no linkage to climate change at all. Figure 2 shows Table 12.12 on Page 90 – Chapter 12 of the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Emergence of Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs) in time periods shows this. The color corresponds to the confidence of the region with the highest confidence: white colors indicate where evidence of a climate change signal is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal.
The section on heavy precipitation is highlighted in yellow. Note that the white spaces in the table for heavy precipitation indicate that such events have not emerged in the present, nor are they expected to emerge by 2050 in the context of long-term climate change. See the key at the bottom for the meaning of all colors.
Figure 2 – Table 12.12 | on Page 90 – Chapter 12 of the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Emergence of Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs)
Obviously, climate science does not support the claims made by Freedman and AXIOS about Dubai rainfall and flooding.
This shameful rush to judgment blaming climate change in the media is part of a pattern we have observed time and again here at Climate Realism. Almost without fail, when there is some oddball or unique weather event anywhere in the world, climate alarmists and the media immediately rush to blame it on climate change whether they have any facts to support it or not. Such behavior is irresponsible journalism.
For more on flooding and the misattribution to anthropogenic climate change, see our Everything Climate post here.
“has happened before according to weather history for the area”
I doubt the historical record is very good, especially outside of cities, but I’d like to see it, especially if they go back to the bizarre decade of the 1930s.
There are records going back to the 19th century for the Arabian Peninsular. For example
“A computer simulation in 2009 estimated”
Which means the waves were more likely 3ft.
Laugh
Computer models for wind driven waves are much more reliable than climate models. The physics is simple. The geography is well established.
Models are useful tools. I used models all the time. The reality is, the climate cannot model molecular interactions on a 25 km grid, just for starters.
In 2009 Jeddah on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast had a similar rainstorm and flood.
Widely reported at the time, but not much noticed, how many people fly and transit Jeddah compared to Dubai?
In Dec 1997, at Dubai Airport, i witnessed the heaviest rain I have ever seen anywhere, anytime. visibility through the rain was less than 5 meters! Couldn’t see the bus that was parked across the street! Fortunately, it was very short, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but long enough to halt flights for a couple of hours until the runways were drained.
The better half used to work in Saudi – Taif and Riyadh back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
There were several drowning deaths due to people sheltering under highway overpasses during intense rain storms. It was not an uncommon event.
There will be more floods this year. We seem to be at the end of the Australian Brushfire particulates and close to the end of HT effects. Recent step functions in global humidity can just as easily explain the strange weather phenomena (floods,heat waves, extreme cold outbreaks etc..) this decade. This decade we are experiencing is similar to El-Chichon and Pinatubo effects.
climate4you welcome
Or maybe not.
And maybe they will be even worse next year, because maybe physics actually works.
But predictions don’t seem to.
Some predictions do work, next year there will be at least a 50% increase in floods reported. Global temperatures will plummet to pre-HT levels, and the atmosphere will make adjustments. I would be willing to put 100 bucks on the line if you want to take that bet. It is quite possible to predict when and where a hurricane will impact land, days in advance.
A new generation of climate models will soon change the notion of what can and cannot be predicted, VIA spherical harmonics and teleconnections heuristically (AI) derived from the surface stations. The current government funded approaches are a dismal failure as far as providing any useful information to the public / private sector, so private money is funding some very different approaches, and even more importantly the quality and quantity of data that has been acquired over the last decade+ has not been integrated into models to exploit such detailed information.
When all outcomes support the preferred hypothesis, one can be assured they have entered the realm of a religion masquerading as science being peddled by charlatans and soothsayers.
Do you operate on preferred hypothesis?
Unfortunately, I am forced to use data, and I generally cannot be wrong, or it goes very bad.
If I told you the date a killer freeze will visit your town, what good would it do, your going to find out a week in advance from the NWS either way. And you’re still going to have to pick up the pieces either way.
There are floods every year, somewhere on the planet.
How can declining atmospheric humidity lead to more flooding? Perhaps less instead?
It is the feedback of declining water vapor holding less heat in the atmosphere and consequently less water vapor. And cooler air aloft leads to stronger thunderstorm convection, especially in hurricanes. A cooling world is more turbulent than a warming world.
These are the events I expect to see this summer in this Hemisphere, like what is currently going on in the Southern Hemisphere.
Brazil: Hundreds of homes destroyed in deadly floods – DW – 03/25/2024
Most deserts have floods sooner or later. When there’s no rain- there’s no river, only a “dry wash”. Then when it rains, even a mild rain, the valley will flood as there is little vegetation to slow it down. But urban development is such a basis will exacerbate any flooding.
The link shows a flood in Death Valley.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-valley-lake-manly-badwater-basin/
When I was in the Army in the early 80s, we went to Ft Irwin, CA (Mojave Desert) for 30 days of desert training. During those 30 days, it rained more than the last 10 years combined. This was in August of 83. We kept to the high ground.
Yes, but…
“We need to talk about water – and the fact that the world is running out of it.”
George Monbiot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/04/water-world-run-out-planet-hotter-looming-crisis?ref=quillette.com
George Monbidiot and the Grauniad…’nuff said.
That’s Moonbat
Agree, but I just thought Monbidiot was funny.
“species living in freshwater are becoming extinct at roughly five times the rate of species that live on land”
Wow! I thought and clicked on the reference. Extinction is not even mentioned in the paper. The man is a charlatan.
The World is “running out of water”?!?!
Where’s it going? What’s destroying it?
(Aside from being made into hydrogen fuels.)
PS If we’re running out of water, what’s causing sea level rise?
PS. Two computers ago, I had a chart from the USGS (Late 1990’s) that had to do with water usage and was returned to the receiving waters.
Most (almost all?) of the water used in farming is returned to the receiving waters. Most of what doesn’t return evaporates or is in the plants or the animals we use food.
(Grocery stores might sell jerky or dehydrated foods, but for the most part they sell stuff with the water still in it.)
This “running out of water” thing is another example of not looking at the whole picture.
PS I looked up that chart so many years ago in response to an Animal Rights Activist claim similar to Moonbat’s claim about running out of water.
If he has said, potable water, I would lean towards agreement.
The refugees, as reported, in Iran are not due to climate change but rather to a lack of drinking water.
Is that one of those “age progression” things or a look at her inner self?
RCP8.5 doesn’t support the extreme claims and RCP8.5 is so extreme as to not be credible.
The IPCC themselves tell us RCP8.5 isn’t credible, but that doesn’t stop climate “scientists” and the Misleadia using it to scare the children
As an aside, it’s interesting to see that the IPCC assigns a high confidence of increase in mean ocean temperature from human generated CO2. Frank N provided me with the link to Jim Steele’s 2022/07/31 article on ocean warming in WUWT, which says there is no scientific proof to conclude that atmospheric CO2 can cause the ocean to warm. Another day older, another step closer to just making stuff up I guess.
Jim Steele is right. Seawater is heated by sunlight, not by CO2. The infrared bands involved in CO2’s alleged effect on surface land temperature cannot penetrate water. The energy delivered by such is instead deposited in the topmost layer of water’s surface (a very few molecules deep) where the water is quickly evaporated taking the energy delivered by CO2 with it. Cloud cover has decreased a few percent in recent decades allowing more sunlight to enter the water. This is likely the cause of slightly increasing seawater temperature if it is happening at all. Measured increases are so tiny that they are well within instrument error.
The solar irradiance that the Earth receives has been at its highest level over the past 100 years of any time in the past 400 years.
https://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/data/historical_tsi
It would not be measurable due to the very low concentration, but the specific heat of CO2 is not identical to the specific heat of water (or brine) and a miniscule delta temperature does occur.
Nothing is absolute.
Under climate scam scenarios, yes the extremes were supposedly going to get worse.
But drier was supposed to get drier and wetter was supposed to wetter. Not drier getting wetter as we saw here in Dubai.
Basically the climate scammers invoke their scam pagan climate religion no matter what the outcome. All outcomes lead to climate change, it cannot be falsified.
The hallmark of junk science.
And when the results are different, they change what they say they predicted.
Every day multiple locations on Earth experience statistically extreme weather events, and this has been going on forever, since the Earth developed an atmosphere. It’s inevitable. But not statistically significant of any change in climate.
As for the ability of Dubai’s stormwater management system to handle that much rainfall in a 24 hour period, it should be noted that nowhere in any developed part of the world is the stormwater management system designed and built to withstand extreme events.
Here in the United States, the municipal stormwater management systems are designed according to varyng return periods (no. year storm, like 5 year storm, 25 year storm) and storm durations (a given amount of rainfall in a given period of time … the same volume of rain falling in 1 hour is not nearly as much flood potential as that falling in 24 hours).
The return period, intensity, and duration of storms is evaluated based upon long term (greater than 30 year) measured data for a specific location, and which is statistically grouped.
Anyway, it’s typical for municipal street drainage systems to be designed to not overflow the curbs for somewhere between the 2 year storm and the 5 year storm … and for stormwater retention ponds to not exceed their design storage for a 25 year storm. I have no idea what kind of return period this was in Dubai, but it sure sounds like a helluva lot more than 2 years or even 25 years.
The Persian Gulf and Red Sea are unique bodies of water in the connected oceans. They are the only ocean regions that reach a temperature above 32C for a few months. That means they usually do not achieve cyclic convective instability that limits open ocean to a sustainable 30C with some overshoot to as much as 32C before the cyclic instability sets in. The semi-enclosed bodies of water like the Red Sea and Persian Gulf usually have northerly winds that prevent formation of a level of free convection; essentially too little moisture at mid altitude because of the dry desert air.
Persian Gulf has never recorded a tropical cyclone in human history despite the high surface temperature at relatively high latitude.
However there is a long term trend in increasing atmospheric water. Rising at 3% per decade just north of the Equator. This year there was an early season northerly air flow into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea. The total precipitable water was much higher at 52mm than usual and enabled convective instability to form. Note the high trend in TPW over the Arabian Sea on the attached
The solar intensity in the NH has been increasing for 500 years and that is causing an increase in atmospheric water particularly over the northern tropics. Now up 9% since the satellite records started in 1988. More atmospheric water will increase the likelihood of convective storms where they have been rare. The higher moisture also extends down to northern Australia so the recent increase in rainfall will become an established trend.
A single downpour over Dubai is weather but I would not bet against it becoming more common. Any civil planning in Dubai should be allowing for such events.
The Mediterranean is now reaching the 30C limit in August and is large enough to sustain cyclones. These will often head south toward the dry air in Africa so tropical storms will become more common over Northern Africa as well but later in the year.
Very nice.
A few years ago I visited Sydney. One night a whopping more than 100mm, 4 inches, rain came down in about 5 hours. Nothing unusual, I was told, has happened before.
On April 5 this year Sydney had 125mm of rain. The next day they got 162mm. But they are the worst two days this year so far.
Cairns had 877mm of rain over 6 days last December. That is quite a lot of water.