You can order food, hail a driver, and even find a spouse with the click of a button; but is it possible to swipe right and change the weather? For the United Arab Emirates, the answer is, shockingly: yes.
It’s a little more complicated than simply swiping right or clicking a button, but scientists in the UAE have been able to trigger rains in the intolerably hot country.
Officials in Dubai are using drones to “shock” the clouds using electrical charges, which in turn cause the clouds to coalesce together, and trigger more rainfall.
The technology, known as “cloud seeding” has been able to bring relief to the Kingdom that has had temperatures blow past 120 degrees Fahrenheit in its flagship city of Dubai.
Scientists laud the technology, saying that it makes rain form more efficiently in clouds, and in turn, more rain comes tumbling down.
It’s not light pitter-patter either.
The UAE’s National Center of Meteorology released footage showing massive rain showers flooding roads and lightning lighting up the sky.
In desert countries like the UAE, water is almost as valuable as oil: they only receive four inches of rain a year, according to the Independent.
Linda Yiu, a professor at the UAE’s Khalifa University of Science and Technology, is hopeful the new tech can help solve the water scarcity issue: “Cloud seeding could be one of the methods that can contribute to alleviating the water problem.”
For all the critics out there who slammed the much-derided 2017 disaster-flick Geostorm—a movie about a satellite that controls the weather and goes haywire causing mass destruction—might have to do an about face after seeing this new technology. Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to the same disastrous effects as the movie.
In the meantime, citizens of Dubai can cool off and bask in the suddenly plentiful rainfall.
