To combat a severe water crisis, Iranian authorities have launched a rain-inducing cloud-seeding operation, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported on Saturday, amid the driest autumn in half a century.
Iran’s Meteorological Organization’s National Weather Forecasting Center announced on Saturday that precipitation across the country has decreased by about 89% compared to the long-term average, making Iran the driest autumn in 50 years.
IRNA said the cloud-seeding operation was carried out “by aircraft equipped with cloud-seeding equipment” in the Lake Urmia basin in the northwest of the country.
The process, which has been used in Iran for many years, disperses chemicals into clouds that release water as rain.
This comes as Iran is experiencing its worst drought in history, and the fifth consecutive year of drought. Record-low rainfall has caused major reservoirs to shrink, leaving authorities scrambling to reduce water consumption and residents desperately trying to preserve them to avoid catastrophe.
Just 20 years ago, Lake Urmia was the largest lake in the Middle East, and the local economy was thriving with hotels and restaurants catering to tourists. Currently, the boat is left rusting and motionless on land that is rapidly turning into a salt flat.
Climate change is making an already difficult situation even worse.
Iran’s state-run Press TV said in a report on Sunday that the severe water crisis has “raised concerns about the supply of drinking water in major cities, including the capital Tehran.”
As quoted by IRNA, Mohammad Mehdi Javadian Zadeh, director of the National Cloud Seeding Research Center, said these cloud seeding activities will continue until mid-May “regardless of the presence of suitable systems in the country, whether by planes or drones.”
“Given that our country is located in an arid region and there is an urgent need for renewable water resources, cloud seeding is carried out solely with the purpose of increasing rainfall in different watersheds,” Javadian Zadeh added.
