To fight a extreme water disaster, Iranian authorities have begun cloud-seeding operations to induce rainfall, Iran’s state-run IRNA information company reported on Saturday, amid the driest fall in half a century.
Iran’s National Weather Forecasting Center of the Meteorological Organizations mentioned Saturday that rainfall throughout the nation has decreased by about 89% in contrast to the long-term common, making this the driest Autumn Iran has skilled in the previous 50 years.
The cloud-seeding operation was carried out “by aircraft equipped with cloud seeding equipment” in the Lake Urmia basin in the northwest of the nation, IRNA mentioned.
It’s a course of used in Iran for years, in which chemical compounds are dispersed into clouds to stimulate the discharge of moisture as rain.
This comes as Iran experiences one in all its worst droughts on file, and its fifth consecutive yr of drought. Key reservoirs are shrinking as rainfall is at file lows, and authorities are scrambling to cut back water consumption, and residents are desperately attempting to preserve it to stave off disaster.
Just two decades ago, Lake Urmia was the Middle East’s largest lake, and its native financial system thrived with accommodations and eating places catering to vacationers. Now, boats sit rusted and motionless on land that’s quickly turning right into a salt plain.
Climate change is making an already extreme scenario considerably worse.
An acute water disaster “has even raised alarms about drinking-water supplies in major cities, including the capital Tehran,” Iran’s state-run Press TV mentioned in a report on Sunday.
(*50*) Mehdi Javadian-Zadeh, the pinnacle of the National Cloud-Seeding Research Center, mentioned these cloud-seeding operations will proceed till mid-May “whether by airplane or drone, and if suitable systems exist in the country,” as cited by IRNA.
“Considering that our country is located in arid regions and the urgent need for renewable water resources, cloud seeding is only performed to increase precipitation in various catchment basins,” Javadian-Zadeh added.