What is cloud seeding and did it play any role in the Dubai floods? [Video]

Stranded airline passengers and a cat submerged in floodwaters clinging to a car door handle became notable moments this week in Dubai as the normally arid city was inundated with historic levels of rain. Claims have gone viral that the deluge was brought on by cloud seeding, a technique that aims to increase precipitation, that is heavily utilized in the United Arab Emirates. 

But is it really to blame? 

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that getting to the bottom of the “record-shattering extreme rainfall” requires breaking down the science behind the event and the technique. 

“There’s currently a disconnect in the online discourse between the kind of human activities that likely did affect it (greenhouse warming) versus those which have actually been the focus of the online conversation thus far (cloud seeding), and what this means for how we collectively understand our ability to actively affect the weather on different spatial and …