LONDON - Climate change is making the Middle East and North Africa hotter and drier. Clouds have emerged as a new battlefield in the scramble for fresh water.
Countries across the region are turning to “cloud-seeding,” an unproven process of injecting chemicals into clouds to try to force precipitation. (The science is complicated, but the basic idea is to make water molecules heavy enough that they fall as rain.)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the undisputed leader: After 20 years of research and experimentation, the country runs its program with near-military protocols. Nine pilots rotate on standby, ready for meteorologists to spot a promising weather formation.
Other countries are racing to catch up, sometimes accusing one another of stealing water. And the process is complicated, imprecise and hotly debated in the scientific community: There are serious questions about whether the technique generates enough rainfall to be worth the effort and the expense.
Cloud Wars: Mideast rivalries rise along new front
As climate change makes the region hotter and drier, the UAE is leading the effort to squeeze more rain out of the clouds, and other countries are rushing to keep up.