Madrid — The episodes of torrential rains in desert areaslike the one that the Arabian Peninsula in the Persian Gulf has just suffered, they will no longer be exceptional and they will tend to be more common due to the warming of ocean water and its impact on the effect of large storm systems.
“In recent times, for the global warming“We are seeing that even in countries with extreme dryness, episodes also occur in which it rains more than the annual average in a single day,” meteorologist José Miguel Viñas, from Meteored, explains to Efe.
With a warmer sea surface, as is happening, “there are increasingly more favorable conditions” so that, in situations with large storm structures – such as the one that, specifically, moved across the Arabian Peninsula – the result would be “rains of extraordinary intensity”, adds the expert.
He warns that there has been speculation about whether cloud seeding programs are being carried out in these countries; Those things that are said “have no basis,” says the meteorologist.
The intense rains in the Arabian Peninsula are “further evidence of how the behavior of precipitation is beginning to change,” he adds.
Viñas explains that the formation of precipitation comes from what is known in meteorology as a mesoscale convective system.
Specifically, it is a structure that, far from the usual summer storms, has larger dimensions, on a more regional scale, not so much local, and the duration of the phenomenon is also longer.
Viñas indicates that these convective systems “They feed on each other and can last several hours.”, in which they leave heavy precipitation, in many cases, in the form of hail or intense rain.
The formation of that type of structures or any storm “It is not something associated with global warming, nor with the fact that it is hotter now or that the oceans are warmer“, but are part of certain phenomena at a given time and certain conditions of atmospheric instability.
But the truth is that “when these conditions end up happening,” the fact that the ocean water is as warm as it is currently, adds additional humidity to the process that causes the storm system to leave rains “heavier than would be usual.” ”.
In the area of the Arabian Peninsula, stormy situations that also leave rain are a given and are not exceptional.; “The strange thing, the strange thing has been the magnitude of these last ones”, that is what is different, due to the impact of the influence of the very warm ocean.