UAE banks on 'rainmakers' to secure future water supply

As climate change makes the desert nation hotter and drier and a growing economy uses more water, the United Arab Emirates is giving 5m to international researchers finding ways to wring more moisture out of the clouds

On a winter morning in one of the world's driest and most water-stressed countries, meteorologist Sufian Khaled Farrah watched on the Doppler radar screen as a cold, wet front scudded across the Arabian Gulf - and quickly called air traffic controllers.

Over the next 15 hours, six twin-engine planes took off from an airfield in Al Ain, on the eastern edge of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and flew repeatedly into the clouds, firing off 162 flares loaded with tiny particles of potassium chloride and sodium chloride, or table salt. By the end of Farrah's shift at the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology, a light drizzle was falling across much of the UAE. Farrah had made it rain.