The belief of some that the Morocco would have caused the flood a Valencia with its experiments on cloud seeding was born from a post shared several times in which reference is made to an article from the EuroWeeklyNews newspaper which cites an article from the El Tiempo website which claims that Spain is worried about cloud seeding activities organized in Morocco, that technology that makes it rain artificially.
The concern referred to the cities of Ceuta and Melilla which are located in Africa, despite being Spanish.
El Tiempo is also passed off as the Spanish meteorological agency, while in reality the official agency is Agencia AEMET Meteorological Office.
From there, fear mixed with social networks gave way to a series of re-sharings that fueled this erroneous belief among some.
Among other things, the same website El Tiempo published this article on November 4, in which it explains that it was DANA that caused the flood in Valencia, just as the scientists also explain, and not cloud seeding.
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What is DANA that caused the flood in Valencia
DANA, Depresion Aislada en Niveles Altos, isolated depression in the high levels, is a not rare meteorological phenomenon, also known as a “cold drop”, which is created when at high latitudes cold and unstable currents flow which meet warmer and more stable ones at lower latitudes, triggering strong thunderstorms.
In the case of Valencia, this phenomenon was so intense due to warmer than usual sea temperatures that caused almost 500 millimeters of rain to fall from the sky in just 8 hours, i.e. the amount of rain expected for a year.
In short, once again it is the climate changes caused by us human beings that are responsible for this tragedy.
Cloud seeding, what is it and can it change the climate?
The cloud seeding it is that technology that allows it to rain when it naturally wouldn’t rain.
Rain is formed when water vapor, which rises towards the sky, meets and envelops dust or other particles, called condensation nuclei, thanks to which it becomes heavier and falls back towards the ground in the form of rain.
Cloud seeding creates this process artificially: it adds condensation nuclei, usually based on silver iodide, to the clouds, to which the cloud droplets join and it rains.
So cloud seeding can make it rain where there are clouds.
Morocco and beyond: the risks of cloud seeding
Morocco has been experimenting with cloud seeding for many years now, as have other countries, and scientists are currently studying whether there could be changes to the climate following the use of this technology, but for now the main concerns are the risks related to iodide of silver, which at high concentrations can be dangerous to health, and to the political tensions that could be created in a hypothetical future in which countries implement cloud seeding on a large scale.
At the moment, however, there is no evidence of links between extreme meteorological phenomena and cloud seeding, while there is evidence of the link between these and climate change.
