Despite scientific consensus on the human origin of global warming, theories flood social networks to try to deny or minimize it. For example, many Internet users claim that cloud seeding, technical which consists of introducing chemical particles into the clouds to cause rain in small geographical areas, is responsible for flooding which have recently affected many countries such as Spain or the United Arab Emirates, rather than climate change. This is false, according to the various scientists interviewed by AFP who exclude the idea that it could cause such bad weather. On the other hand, they emphasize the responsibility of climate change for these heavy precipitations and the floods they cause.
“Mallorca Airport [sic] is overwhelmed by downpours… Let them persevere in seeding the clouds“, published for example on June 11, 2024 by an Internet user after a major flood experienced by Palma de Mallorca airport on Tuesday June 11, 2024 (archive).
Another Internet user comments on the floods experienced by Gulf countries in May 2024, estimating onit seems that Saudi Arabia, like the Emirates, has completely lost control over its geoengineering and cloud seeding“.
Cloud seeding involves introducing tiny particles into clouds to cause rain over small geographic areas.
Allegations of weather manipulation have emerged after every major flood this year, notably in Zimbabwe, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other European countries such as Germany, but also in France.
This video below, broadcast on Facebook, which testifies to floods in Moselle which took place in May 2024, was taken up and shared by an Internet user who also accuses the incense of the clouds.
According to data from Google Trends, a tool for measuring the evolution of the number of searches for specific keywords on Google, searches for terms “cloud seeding” reached a record level after the Dubai floods of April 16, 2024 (archive).
They had also been widely commented on on social networks at the time, and experts interviewed by AFP had on this occasion already underlined the role “highly probable” climate change in the occurrence of such weather events.
This type of assertion is part of recurring rumors that call into question climate change and/or its human origin, despite the existence of an international consensus detailed in the summary reports published by IPCC scientists.
An instrument to combat drought
Cloud seeding, used for the first time in 1946 in New York to combat drought, consists of introducing, by plane or from the ground, compounds (salts, silver iodide, etc.) which will agglomerate water vapor present in the cloud to form frozen water droplets which eventually fall to the ground in the form of rain or snow (archive). Cloud seeding has since grown in some countries as a way to combat drought and increase local water supplies.
“Seeding attempts to increase precipitation by enhancing the processes that create it in clouds”explained in an email to AFP on April 23, 2024 Roelof Burger, professor of physical geography, specializing in the interactions between the Earth’s atmosphere and human activities, at North-West University, in South Africa ( archive).
The United Arab Emirates have used it since 2002 (archive), under the aegis of their National Meteorology Center (archive).
But, if this technique is intended to cause rain in delimited arid areas, scientists explain that it can’t trigger precipitation as heavy as that observed in 2024 in some countries.
“Due to the high natural variability of clouds, there is very little scientific evidence which show that cloud seeding actually has a measurable effect on precipitations“, Andrea Flossmann, co-chair of a team of experts on weather modification at the World Meteorological Organization (archived here), told AFP on June 7, 2024.
Giuseppe CACACEAFP
A study by the research group “World Weather Attribution” on cloud seeding was published on June 3, 2024. Experts from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (archived here) rely on this to assert that “climate change has made extreme rainfall that caused destructive flooding in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul more likely“and a”worsened the intense rains caused by El Niño” .(archive)
“There is consensus that climate change is responsible for many of these extreme weather events.“, also explained to AFP on May 31, 2024 Mariana Madruga de Brito, a Brazilian scientist from Rio Grande do Sul (archive).
But she insisted that cloud seeding”cannot be the cause of events of such magnitude“.
Strengthening climate change denial
In an interview with AFP in March 2024, Di Yang, assistant professor at the University of Wyoming (archive), said that extensive research carried out over several decades has shown “no definitive large-scale or long-term impacts of cloud seeding“.
However, this technique has become a recurring target from Internet users used to questioning climate change. AFP and other fact-finding media have recently debunked several false allegations of weather manipulation following major floods in recent years.
Callum Hood, research director at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British NGO combating online disinformation (archive), told AFP that as severe weather events become more frequent, “climate deniers are doubling down on their efforts to claim these extreme events have nothing to do with climate change“.
“We see this every summer now“, he also indicated.
The researcher then returned to the ability of Internet users to find during each natural disaster a new argument to question the warming of the Earth. “trying to argue that extreme weather events have another cause, whether it’s geoengineering or something else.”
Lincoln Muniz Alves, researcher at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (archive), reminded AFP on May 15, 2024 that the dissemination of rumors and false assertions not only hinders effective communication during environmental crises, but also that ‘She “reinforces the point of view of those who deny the reality of climate change“.
While weather modification methods such as cloud seeding attract some criticism and reservations within the scientific community, particularly due to the risk of unintended consequences such as pollution, (archive), they remain unanimous on the urgency of the climate crisis.
“The focus on cloud seeding ignores the bigger picture: For more than a century, humans have been releasing greenhouse gases that have warmed the planet and made heavy rains more likely in many parts of the world“, Edward Gryspeerdt, researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute (archive), told AFP on June 10, 2024.
With global warming caused by human activities, scientists agree that extreme weather events will become more and more frequent.
The AFP verification team has produced dedicated fact sheets on the climate.
