The UAE's Rain Enhancement Programme - through cloud-seeding- is considered among the significant components of the country's National Strategy for Innovation, according to a UAE official.
"Cloud-seeding is one of the most efficient methods to provide barren land with water and we are marking the 'World Day to Combat Desertification' this year by focusing on farmlands on account of their essential role in ensuring stability and sustainability for world countries in the future," Alya Al Mazroui, Manager of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, has told Emirate News Agency, WAM.
The UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, launched by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs in 2015, is collaborating with a team of leading meteorologists to develop a potentially ground-breaking technology revolving around the ‘electrical seeding’ of clouds, a theoretical concept that studies the effect of electrical charges on rain-bearing clouds.
"As up to 2.6 billion people all over the world depend directly on agriculture, desertification has its own bearing on around one sixth of the world population and its ramifications affect 70 percent of barren land across the globe," Al Mazroui said.
The United Nations marks the World Desertification Day on June 17th every year to promote public awareness relating to international cooperation to combat desertification and the effects of drought, she explained.
She added that the UAE sets a role model for employing state-of-the-art-technology to survive challenges associated with shortage of irrigation and drinking water and food security, Cloud-seeding operations over the UAE have played a major part in increasing rainfall, she noted, explaining that the goal of cloud-seeding is to increase condensation within the cloud and trigger precipitation.
 
Source: WAM