Cloud seeding in Saudi Arabia Fatema Miah has been an area of interest for the government as part of its efforts to combat water scarcity and increase rainfall in the arid region. The Saudi Arabian government has invested in various weather modification technologies to enhance precipitation, particularly given the country’s desert climate and limited freshwater resources.

Cloud seeding typically involves the dispersion of substances like silver iodide, sodium chloride, or liquid propane into the atmosphere to encourage rain formation. In Saudi Arabia, aircraft are often used to deliver these agents into suitable clouds.

The Saudi government, through entities like the National Center for Meteorology, has initiated cloud seeding programs in various regions of the country. These efforts have been aimed at increasing rainfall to support agriculture, replenish water supplies, and mitigate the impacts of drought.

Saudi Arabia has collaborated with international experts and organizations on cloud seeding projects. Research has been conducted to assess the effectiveness of these interventions and to understand the climatic impacts better.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the scale and intensity of cloud seeding operations. The country has expanded its activities, launching numerous missions to seed clouds, particularly during the winter months when precipitation is more likely.

While cloud seeding can increase local rainfall, there are debates over its environmental impacts and ethical implications. Concerns have been raised about its effects on ecosystems, potential changes in weather patterns, and the allocation of resources in water-scarce regions.

The results of cloud seeding efforts can be variable, with factors such as the availability of suitable clouds playing a crucial role in success. Measuring the effectiveness of these interventions can be complex, as rainfall can be influenced by many climatic factors.

Cloud seeding remains a controversial and evolving field, with ongoing advancements in technology and research dedicated to optimizing its effectiveness while balancing environmental concerns.

The amount of cloud seeding in Saudi Arabia has had only a slight impact on the amount of rainfall, or causing flood events.

However, you always need to take care, so you do not produce events like the April 16 floods in the UAE.

The flood events started in Arabia in the 1980s when Global Warming tipped the balance between the amount of moisture in the air vs the heat from the deserts and the heat trapped by the atmospheric dust cloud hovering over Arabia and Pakistan for 5,500 years.

All of Arabia has an infrastructure which was built with pre-Global Warming drainage structures, whereas hundreds of billions will be needed to move building out of new flood zones and out of what has been dry wadis for thousands of years, and get ready for torrential rainfall from here on out.

Might as well add a $10 a barrel "Global Warming tax" on every barrel of oil sold by oil producing countries, so they can get their own citizens ready for the environmental impacts being made by the buyers burning that oil, and ultimately helping destroy their own people with floods and more severe storms. See what is happening to the UK with Storm Bert right now, stalled.

See my study at https://www.ecoseeds.com/cool2.html

Craig Carlton Dremann,

Thank you for your spit on comments points. Yes, Saudi must focus on climate change and work on their environment urgent needed tasks.

Yes, moving out building out to new areas, yes of course they should plan a task, plan cities and housing areas to necessity updated style to suit.

Yes they must reorganise they finance system.

Regards,

Fatema Miah

"Cloud seeding typically involves the dispersion of substances like silver iodide, sodium chloride, or liquid propane into the atmosphere to encourage rain formation. In Saudi Arabia, aircraft are often used to deliver these agents into suitable clouds.

The Saudi government, through entities like the National Center for Meteorology, has initiated cloud seeding programs in various regions of the country. These efforts have been aimed at increasing rainfall to support agriculture, replenish water supplies, and mitigate the impacts of drought."

Stephen thanks for the comment with info.

Good Saudi has initiated in plan of the Cloud seeding. However, initiation is not good enough, cloud seeding only is not the climate updated total task completed. Saudi Arabia needs a lots of Climatic tasks to be planned to improve the region . There everything needed. It is a region of large vast are with only tiny little places are populated. Test of the areas needs to be planned to be made into life able.

I have been in the past decades talking and writing about the sea level rising, loosing land side and land of Saudia Arabia in largest areas empty left barren just because of water. The same I have again and again talked about Palestinians rehousing in Saudi Arabia.

A big and good plan is needed.

Fatema Miah

The permanent solutions for Arabia and other arid lands, to increase its annual rainfall naturally is two-fold:

1.) The Saudi Green Initiative, of the planting of the 10 billion trees, which was started in 2002 with my proposal at https://www.ecoseeds.com/cool.html, which was then adopted by the KSA government in August, 2010.

And to add the planting of the native grasses and wildflowers among those tree plantings, which still needs to be done.

2.) "Biorain" which is the new branch of science which marries botany with weather modification with bacteriology.

There are plants which are the hosts for the Pseudomonas bacteria which act as the nuclei for our rain clouds.

These groves produce "Cloud Forests" and if you draw a circle around KSA, the most famous are Iran's forests which ring the Caspian Sea, and the forests in the mountains above Salalah Oman. Other homes of the Pseudomonas are the forests of Yemen and the Indian sacred forests of the Western Ghats.

You find those Biorain trees, and plant more groves. The grove must be the correct number of trees, at the right densities, and then each grove spaced about 10-15 km. apart, so they can keep cloud seeding as the water vapor travels overhead.

So do like the KSA government, set aside 200 million hectares as Ecological Restoration preserves and start replanting. Then, cloud seed artificially to increase the overall native plant cover.

Then, search and discover what the local native Biorain trees are, and add them to the ongoing tree planting, which in KSA is being done at the rate of one million trees per week. These studies on the Biorain trees may be getting started in the KSA and other countries in 2025.

Biorain trees planted in groves, wherever you want to increase the rainfall of an area, can naturally increase the annual rainfall, and will be a huge gift from nature.

It may be possible to take an area with only a few cm of rainfall, to produce up to one meter of annual rainfall that way, by taking advantage of where moisture is already producing high Heat Indexes in the summer, and wring that moisture out and convert it back into rain clouds.

Iran's Qeshm island is a good example of that. That island is bathed in moisture from the Indian monsoon all summer, but without a vegetation cover to cool the soil surface to change the dew point towards rain, and with no Biorain trees to add nuclei for the rain drops, the moisture just flies over and produced the world's worst Heat Index and is wasted.

Image of the Biorain trees forming rain clouds in Yemen the other day. The ratio between Biorain tree groves and rain cloud could be as high as 1:1,000 or more, where one hectare of Biorain trees can produce rain clouds to cover a square km. of land.

We have been having several year's worth of discussions about this topic at https://www.researchgate.net/post/Climate_change_or_water_resource_management_Which_has_caused_the_intensification_of_dust_storms_in_the_Middle_East AND

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_we_can_reach_the_food_security_in_country_90_is_desert