Unravelling the Climate Puzzle: The Arabian Peninsula’s Struggle with Extreme Weather and Climate Change by Aiman Nisar

The Arabian Peninsula is situated on the intersection of Africa and Asia. It is a vast diversified region including the countries like United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Yemen. The region is blessed with the natural resources, beautiful landscapes, cultural and historical significance but is intricated with severe climate change vulnerabilities, leaving the region into havoc.

In recent years, Arabian Peninsula is struggling with extreme weather conditions due to the overreaching climate change. The intense heatwaves are promoting the scorching weather, the torrential dropouts triggering floods leaving the immediate risk to economy, health, infrastructure and other related vulnerabilities. The recent example to climate change vulnerabilities are the flash flood happened in UAE and Oman on April 17, 2024 where due to torrential weather, almost 18 people killed in Oman and whole UAE drown into water and shutdown for two days. According to the report, around 230mm rain received by Oman and 127mm rain by UAE in single day and on average it receives 100mm rainfall a year, which has broken the 75 years of rainfall record.

The initial speculation was referring the torrential weather with the cloud seeding technique used by UAE on 17^th of April to help addressing the water shortage. Notably UAE is using this technique since 1990.The speculation was later denied by the UAE’s National Centre of Metrology (NCM) and the scientist, referring the extreme weather condition with the climate change. According to a professor in climate extreme at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Dim Cuomo:

The recent thunderstorm witnessed in UAE demonstrate a notable surge in rainfall particularly accentuated by warming trends. The phenomenon occurs due to the intensification of conviction, the powerful updraft within thunderstorm, in a warmer environment.

Hence the global warming increases the processes of evaporation, leads to great moisture content, which has fuelled up the precipitation event. Overall global warming is altering the climatic conditions promoting environmental hazards and non-traditional security issue, which is affecting every part of the world and has drowned the desert like Arabian Peninsula.

About Author:

The writer is the Researcher of International Relations at International Islamic University, Islamabad.