Flooding Dubai Airport: Are Scottish flights impacted by Dubai severe floods? What caused the flooding?

Severe flooding at Dubai Airport has impacted on international flights coming in and out of the transport hub

Dubai has suffered the heaviest rain ever recorded in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), flooding streets and the airport, forcing the cancellation of flights and serious delays of others.

Rain also fell in Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The rain began late on Monday, and intensified around 9am local time on Tuesday. Downpours continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail on the overwhelmed city.

Motorists drive along a flooded street following heavy rains in Dubai.

By the end of Tuesday, more than 142mm of rain had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 94.7mm of rain at Dubai International Airport. At the airport, standing water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.

Have Scottish flights been impacted by the Dubai Airport flooding?

Scotland has one direct flight a day to Dubai, from Glasgow airport.

The daily flight, operated by Emirates, leaves at 2.35pm and takes seven hours, ten minutes.

A flight landing from London’s Heathrow early on Wednesday morning was diverted to Abu Dhabi Airport. However, the Tuesday Glasgow flight, due to land at 1.05am Dubai time, which is three hours ahead, landed in Dubai, although more than three hours late. Wednesday’s flight is still showing as scheduled on Glasgow Airport’s departures board.

What caused the flooding?

One reason for the acute rain in the UAE may have been “cloud seeding”, in which small planes flown by the government go through clouds burning special salt flares. Those flares can increase precipitation.

Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Centre for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rain.

The UAE, which relies heavily on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, carries out cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.