The UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, UAEREP, awardees highlighted their cutting-edge research projects as part of their participation at the 100th American Meteorological Society, AMS, Annual Meeting – 22nd Conference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification.
Organised by the AMS Committee on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification, the conference ran from 12 to 16 January at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre and featured several panel sessions as well as presentations on the progress made on precipitation enhancement activities and development of different seeding techniques in response to global water shortage. It presented recommendations regarding the most urgent research topics to stimulate further research in rain enhancement science.
As part of its participation in the conference, UAEREP supported the WMO/WWRP Peer Review Report on Global Precipitation Enhancement Activities presented by Prof. Andrea Flossmann from the WMO Expert Team.
Alya Al Mazroui, Director of UAEREP, said, "Our awardees participation in this long-standing conference provided us with an opportunity to share the highlights of our research interests, methods, approaches and accomplishments with global research community and better understand their climate and water sector related endeavors to identify specific research gaps. This will allow us to attract high-quality and demand driven research proposals as part of the program’s future cycles, while strengthening our capacity to address the unique water security and water resource management challenges facing our region in 21st century."
Al Mazroui added, "Through stepping up collaboration with like-minded organisations and carrying out pioneering projects in water sector research, UAEREP has come a long way in advancing rain enhancement research and developing a common framework towards developing feasible cloud seeding solutions."
The WMO report on rain enhancement focused on the two cloud types most seeded in the past: winter orographic cloud systems and convective cloud systems; and discussed different seeding techniques and requirements for the design, implementation and evaluation of a catchment-scale precipitation enhancement campaign.
Final project results and milestones by the programme’s first cycle awardees were presented during the conference by Prof. Masataka Murakami from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University who worked on a project titled ‘Advanced study on precipitation enhancement in arid and semi-arid regions’, as well as by Prof. Volker Wulfmeyer, Managing Director and Chair of Physics and Meteorology at the Institute of Physics and Meteorology of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart whose research focused on ‘Optimising cloud seeding by advanced remote sensing and land cover modification’.
The conference also showcased achievements of the second cycle awardees, Dr Paul Lawson, a Senior Research Scientist at SPEC Incorporated whose project focused on "Microphysics of Convective Clouds and the Effects of Hygroscopic Seeding", and Professor Hannele Korhonen, the Director of the Climate Research Programme at Finnish Meteorological Institute who worked on a project titled ‘Optimisation of Aerosol Seeding In rain enhancement Strategies, OASIS’.
Furthermore, poster sessions on the research progress of the program’s third cycle awardees were presented by Dr. Lulin Xue, the Chief Scientist at Hua Xin Chuang Zhi Science and Technology LLC and a member of the Beijing Weather Modification Office advisory panel who is working on an innovative research approach to rain enhancement titled ‘Using advanced experimental – Numerical approaches to untangle rain enhancement’.
For his part, Prof. Eric W. Frew, Director of the Autonomous Systems Interdisciplinary Research Theme in the College of Engineering and Applies Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, who is developing an unmanned aircraft system that employs custom-made sensors to gather in-situ, real time data to sense and target suitable clouds for seeding under his project titled ‘Targeted observation and seeding using autonomous unmanned aircraft systems’.