Can you make it rain? If so, a prize of up to $5 million awaits

Clouds above Al Khail road in Dubai — but we need more of them. Annual rainfall is less than 100 millimetres a year and surface water evaporates quickly. Satish Kumar / The National

An urgent need for more rain has inspired the Ministry of Presidential Affairs to launch a $5 million competition to identify up to five research projects that will increase precipitation levels.

Muslims have a prayer for rain, while Native American tribes perform a ritual dance during times of drought.

In the 1950s, Austrian psychoanalyst William Reich devised something called a cloudbuster, a machine he claimed could harness “orgone energy” to produce storms.

Here in the UAE, scientists are looking for methods more certain to produce results in an effort to boost rainfall. As an added incentive, a prize of up to US$5 million (Dh18.3 million) is on offer to anyone who can make it rain.

The need is urgent. With only a handful of rain showers every year, much of the country’s water is produced by desalination plants, while current predictions are that groundwater supplies will dry out in just 15 years.

Alya Al Mazroui, director of the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, which was launched by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs this year, says the scheme is essential to the country’s future growth and survival.

“Population increases and economic growth will put even more pressure on supplies, in addition to water security issues across the world,” she says.

“Many people think when you talk about rain enhancement, we mean to create clouds and rain or that you can make it rain any time in any place, but it doesn’t work that way. We still have to find the proper conditions to have rain, and then to enhance it, increase the amount of rain.”

Ms Al Mazroui has been with the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology in Abu Dhabi for 12 years. She was in charge of training and development, but was recently appointed as director of what is one of the largest and most important schemes the centre has ever managed.

The competition is open to entrants from the UAE and abroad and aims to find up to five research projects to be given grants totalling no more than $5m, distributed over three years depending on budgets and timelines.

Ms Al Mazroui says the bar for submissions is very high. She wants to see submissions from domestic and foreign agencies, profit and not-for-profit, and from the public and private sector.

“If rain enhancement was easy, we would have found solutions years ago without doing a programme to attract scientists,” she said, but it needs support with finance and facilities.

“We don’t want any proposal, we need quality proposals. We are not looking for ‘winners’ for the $5m. We need quality proposals that will give us results with the investment.”

The amount given to the chosen projects will depend on how many programmes are chosen and how much they ask for. It is not a set amount.

While one organisation can submit as many pre-proposals as it wants, a single organisation such as a university can only receive one award for each cycle, which last three years.

There will be potential to extend that if a project is achieving good results but need more time.

Ms Al Mazroui admits the first cycle will be a “learning curve” and that the team are open to adapting and amending the structure.

“It will depend on the proposal,” she says. “Some proposals will go more into the technical side of it, maybe data modelling, so we need specific skills to look at the proposals to decide who will go through.”

The team has also been reaching out to institutions and organisations to alert them to the programme. Interest has been shown from China, Japan, India, Russia, Finland, the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia and from domestic entrants.

“We approached organisations or places that are really interested in, or have been working on, or have a background in this field. We have tried to target these places,” Ms Al Mazroui says.

“Obviously, we might not reach everyone this year, but as more cycles come up we hope the awareness will spread.”

The national weather bureau says annual rainfall is less than 100 millimetres a year. Combined with a high evaporation rate of surface water and a low groundwater recharge rate, this is “far less than the total annual water used in the country”.

A recent study by UAE University in Al Ain revealed the water table level in some parts of the country had fallen by up to 60 metres.

This water provides about half of the country’s needs, with most of it going on irrigation. Agriculture is the biggest drain, using about 34 per cent of the total groundwater in the country.

“We are an arid region and one of the strategic objectives is to find solutions for arid and semi-arid regions,” Ms Al Mazroui says. “The nature of our weather makes it difficult to find rain.

“We hope not only to help ourselves, but help all the other countries that have water security issues. Of course, the results will not be short-term. Three years is just the start. It’s like a chain — you can use this as a base and then do more long-term work. It doesn’t have to be three years, then stop. It all depends on the proposals and the progress.”

The biggest weapon in the country’s arsenal at the moment is its cloud-seeding technology, which helps to enhance the amount of rainfall, but there have been very few technological advancements in the past 50 years.

“We hope this programme encourages people to research and find something,” Ms Al Mazroui says.

Seeding remains a difficult and sometimes unpredictable technique, but if done correctly it can increase rainfall by between 25 and 70 per cent, says Omar Al Yazeedi, director of research, development and training at the weather bureau.

It works by firing flares with calcium and potassium chloride into certain types of clouds. Moisture in the air attaches to the salts, eventually forcing them to drop to the ground.

The bureau has been using the technology since 1990 and, aside from slight tweaks, it is essentially the same technology.

“The reason we launched this is we haven’t seen any enhancement or advancement in cloud seeding in more than 40 years,” Mr Al Yazeedi says.

“Maybe someone will research better seeding materials that would give you better efficiency. Maybe nano-engineer particles that attract and absorb more water.”

There has been little progress in rain enhancement, he says, mainly because of the difficult conditions involved in studying the field.

“You need an airborne type of lab and equipments that can take measurements in a certain way. Maybe there will be an advancement in this field or maybe there is a better way or technique to take samples from the clouds. When you take a sample, it’s one sample of that particular time, you can’t take a vertical cross-section sample, for example.”

Laser technology could be harnessed for rain enhancement, Mr Al Yazeedi says, but it would need investment in research.

“This is the reason we are doing this. We are looking for all submissions. Maybe the outcome won’t be a product or technology but research into basic, fundamental understanding of the cloud.

“We know what’s going on up to a certain limit but we don’t know everything. Nobody until now can make a cloud a control it.”

There may also be a team who could identify a way of tracking the “modificators”, the salt particles, he says. By doing so, experts would have a much better idea of how much they increased the precipitation and therefore be in a better position to accurately maximise the rain.

For Mr Al Yazeedi, not relying so heavily on desalination is a key part of the programme.

But without it, he says, “we would struggle to find water for more than three or four days. Imagine the risk if you have a full country and desalination stops. It’s a dangerous issue.

“This isn’t just for our generation or the generation after. If we keep desalinating water it will affect the salinity of the sea.

“Even if desalinated water is treated, it cannot last. You cannot desalinate water and recharge the underground water. Normal rain and groundwater can last for years and the groundwater is very, very important for agriculture and balancing.”

Mr Al Yazeedi says the balance between the groundwater and the seawater is already uneven, with some coastal farms finding saltwater when they dig down.

“It needs investment and research to change this, this is why the programme was started.”

Entrants must submit their pre-proposals by March 16. The list of those invited to submit the full proposals will be revealed on May 1, and the proposals must be received by August 17.

The final decision will be announced in January next year.

Visit www.uaerep.ae/en for more information.