Dubai received at least two years of rain in a 24-hour period at the beginning of the third week of April. The unexpected amount of water has caused chaos in the city, and the consequences are still looming. It is becoming more and more clear that the UAE must also confront climate change, and must spend on things that were not previously considered.

At dawn on April 16, it started raining in Dubai. No one was surprised, because the meteorological services had already indicated a few days ago that rain was expected (predicting a probability of 50% to 60%), but what actually happened, no one expected. Heavy rain fell almost without stopping, and if it stopped for half an hour, it continued with greater force. There were periods during the day when the darkness of twilight fell upon the city, and there was hardly a second's pause between the lightning strikes.

Then, it is not surprising that in a city constantly suffering from the consequences of lack of rainfall, previously unimaginable chaos is caused by such an amount of rain (at least not since the beginning of records in 1949), because systems were not equipped Sewage. Underground parking lots were flooded, multi-lane highways turned into rivers, and Dubai's main airport turned into a veritable sea and was forced to suspend operations for a while. Many schools were flooded and closed, as were shopping malls. Travel was impossible, Dubai besieged its residents.

The city's artificial lakes overflowed, submerging villas and residential garden homes located in low-lying areas. There were places where they couldn't even get out because of the water, mostly by rubber boats, and the electricity supply was cut off in many places. Although the weather has since returned to its “old” state, i.e. the sun shines for seven days and the daytime temperature is 30-32 degrees, water is still present in many places. There are clean-up priorities, so many people in lower priority areas now have to live with clear risks to public health. In many places, it is not recommended to use tap water to brush teeth, and everyone is asked to limit washing and dishwashing as much as possible.

The “Wonder City”, which she rightly envies, is experiencing perhaps the most difficult days in its history, and at the same time it must confront the effects of climate change for which it is not yet prepared. Of course, this is no surprise, since – as Lisa Dale, a climate adaptation expert at Columbia University in the US – says, Dubai can only prepare for what it sees as within the range of future possibilities. However, predictions of future weather patterns depend on past weather patterns, so it is understandable that Dubai's leadership, like many governments, is unprepared to confront the historically unusual impacts of climate change.

Human-caused climate change is making extreme weather events such as heat and rain more intense, more frequent and more difficult to predict. Although long-range scientific projections indicate that the Middle East will likely experience higher temperatures and lower total precipitation, researchers say these extremely dry places will also see storms that bring unprecedented amounts of rain. This is forcing governments to think about how to adapt to these rare and devastating climate events.

“Cities in arid regions may be particularly unprepared for heavy rainfall, as buildings, landscaping and infrastructure are not designed with drainage capacity as a primary consideration,” he cites. Business standard Zachary Lampitt is an assistant professor at the University of California. Relatedly, stormwater management systems have historically been viewed as an “unnecessary cost” in the UAE, however, as rainfall increases in the region and events like the current one become more likely, the economic case for these systems will become stronger.

The recent weather anomaly has also drawn attention to the cloud feeding program in the UAE. So much so that many attributed it to the unprecedented storm. But Urup Ganguly, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, said it would take “significant data analysis” to determine what role, if any, such programs played in making rainfall more extreme.

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