The UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science

The United Arab Emirates Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP) is a global research initiative offering a grant of US$5 million over a three-year period to be shared by up to five winning research projects in the field of rain enhancement.

The cloud-seeding operations were initiated in the late 1990s in the UAE. By early 2001 these operations were being conducted in cooperation with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, USA, the Witwatersrand University in South Africa and the US Space Agency, NASA.^[1]

Management of the Program

The United Arab Emirates Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science is an initiative of the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Presidential Affairs and was launched at the beginning of 2015 under the patronage^[2] of His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs. It is managed by Alya Al Mazroui and overseen by the UAE National Center of Meteorology & Seismology^[3] (NCMS) based in Abu Dhabi.^[4]

Goals of the Program

• Advance the science, technology and implementation of rain enhancement and encourage additional investments in research funding and research partnerships to advance the field.
• Increase rainfall and water security^[5] globally.

Four pathways have been identified to achieve those goals:

• Enhance the level of research and innovation in the field;
• Advance scientific understanding of rainfall enhancement;
• Advance state-of-the-art rainfall enhancement practices and operations;
• Enhance and further develop capacity in the field both locally and globally.

Selection Process

The research grant is awarded on a yearly basis. The Program invites innovative research and technology proposals from domestic or foreign, public or private, non-profit or for-profit organizations and, in some cases, individuals.^[6]

All of the proposals selected are subject to five criteria:

• Overall Scientific and Technical Merit, Significance and Innovation (30%);
• Approach, Project/Delivery Plan, Milestones and Deliverables (20%);
• Investigator/Team (20%);
• Required/Available Resources and Budget (20%);
• Capacity Building (10%).^[7]

Program cycles

The program had the following two cycles.

First cycle

The first cycle of the Program was announced on 20 January 2015. All awardees were selected by a merit review process^[8] and announced in January 2016.^[9] The awarded research projects were selected based on their ability to promote scientific understanding in the field of rain enhancement science and further develop related technologies, applications, and operations, as well as build capacity.

The three prize-awarded scientists leading the research teams that share this cycle’s grant of US$5 million are:

• Masataka Murakami, Visiting Professor from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University (Japan). Researchers from the University of Tokyo and the Japan Meteorological Agency also contributed to his research project on innovative algorithms and sensors dedicated to identifying the clouds most suitable for seeding.
• Linda Zou, Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering from the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (UAE). Prof. Zou has received contribution to her work on nanotechnology to accelerate water condensation from the National University of Singapore and the University of Belgrade. The research explores the different ways of employing current knowledge of nanotechnology to develop novel cloud seeding materials and make rain droplet formation more efficient.
• Volker Wulfmeyer, Professor, Managing Director and Chair of Physics and Meteorology at the Institute of Physics and Meteorology in the University of Hohenheim (Germany). His research project deals with cloud seeding optimization, and aims to specifically study convergence zones and land cover modification to enhance precipitation.

In 2015, in total, 325 scientists and researchers affiliated to 151 organizations applied to the Program. These researchers, drawn from 34 countries around the world, cooperated as scientific teams on the submission of a total of 78 pre-proposals.^[10]

Second cycle

Announced on January 19, 2016, the Program received 91 pre-proposals^[11] from 398 scientists, researchers, and technologists affiliated to 180 institutes from 45 nations.^[12] Candidates from 45 countries — including scientists and researchers from 15 new countries such as Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Georgia, Hungary, Mexico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sweden, and Turkey, sent proposals to the Program.

After a month-long initial review process, 15 pre-proposals have been shortlisted.^[13] The announcement for the awardees will be made in January 2017.

Cloud seeding in the UAE

The United Arab Emirates has an arid climate with less than 100mm per year of rainfall, a high evaporation rate of surface water and a low groundwater recharge rate. Although rainfall in the UAE has been fluctuating over the last few decades in winter season, most of that occurs in the December to March period. During the summer months, the prevailing Indian Monsoon drought effect leads to a build-up of cumulus clouds especially along the mountainous terrain in the eastern UAE.^[14]

The UAE cloud-seeding Program was initiated in the late 1990s. By early 2001 the Program was being conducted in cooperation with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, USA, the Witwatersrand University in South Africa and the US Space Agency, NASA^[15]

In 2005, the UAE launched the UAE Prize for Excellence in Advancing the Science and Practice of Weather Modification in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization ^[16](WMO). This prize was thereafter reshaped into the International Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science.

It subsequently became the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science in January 2015. The Program for Rain Enhancement Science is an initiative of the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Presidential Affairs. It is overseen by the UAE National Center of Meteorology and Seismology^[3] (NCMS) based in Abu Dhabi.^[4] Among its key goals are advancing the science, technology and implementation of rain enhancement and encouraging additional investments in research funding and research partnerships to advance the field, increasing rainfall and ensuring water security globally.

The UAE now has more 75 networked automatic weather stations distributed across the UAE, 7 air quality stations, a sophisticated Doppler weather radar network of five stationary and one mobile radars, and six Beechcraft King Air C90 aircrafts for cloud seeding operations. Natural salts such as potassium chloride and sodium chloride are used in these operations.^[6] At present, the UAE mostly seed with salt particles in the eastern mountains on the border to Oman to raise levels in aquifers and reservoirs.^[17]

Forecasters and scientists have estimated that cloud seeding operations can enhance rainfall by as much as 30 to 35 per cent in a clear atmosphere, and by up to 10 to 15 per cent in a turbid atmosphere.^[18]

A total of 187 missions were sent to seed clouds in the UAE in 2015, with each aircraft taking about three hours to target five to six clouds at a cost of $3,000 per operation^[19]

References