What is cloud seeding and did it cause Dubai’s severe rainfall?

The Persian Gulf was recently hit with a year’s worth of rain in the span of two days, causing extensive flooding. Some have speculated that the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) attempt at cloud seeding, a method of manipulating clouds to produce more rain, is responsible for the torrential downpour. While scientists have said that geoengineering was not the cause this time, the extreme rain has raised concerns about the technique and whether natural processes like rainfall should be manipulated at all.

What is cloud seeding?

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