Can you make it rain? If so, a prize of up to $5 million awaits
An urgent need for more rain has inspired the Ministry of Presidential Affairs to launch a $5 million competition to identify up to five research projects that will increase precipitation levels.
Muslims have a prayer for rain, while Native American tribes perform a ritual dance during times of drought.
In the 1950s, Austrian psychoanalyst William Reich devised something called a cloudbuster, a machine he claimed could harness “orgone energy” to produce storms.
Here in the UAE, scientists are looking for methods more certain to produce results in an effort to boost rainfall. As an added incentive, a prize of up to US$5 million (Dh18.3 million) is on offer to anyone who can make it rain.
The need is urgent. With only a handful of rain showers every year, much of the country’s water is produced by desalination plants, while current predictions are that groundwater supplies will dry out in just 15 years.
Alya Al Mazroui, director of the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, which was launched by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs this year, says the scheme is essential to the country’s future growth and survival.
“Population increases and economic growth will put even more pressure on supplies, in addition to water security issues across the world,” she says.
“Many people think when you talk about rain enhancement, we mean to create clouds and rain or that you can make it rain any time in any place, but it doesn’t work that way. We still have to find the proper conditions to have rain, and then to enhance it, increase the amount of rain.”
Ms Al Mazroui has been with the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology in Abu Dhabi for 12 years. She was in charge of training and development, but was recently appointed as director of what is one of the largest and most important schemes the centre has ever managed.
The competition is open to entrants from the UAE and abroad and aims to find up to five research projects to be given grants totalling no more than $5m, distributed over three years depending on budgets and timelines.
Ms Al Mazroui says the bar for submissions is very high. She wants to see submissions from domestic and foreign agencies, profit and not-for-profit, and from the public and private sector.
“If rain enhancement was easy, we would have found solutions years ago without doing a programme to attract scientists,” she said, but it needs support with finance and facilities.
“We don’t want any proposal, we need quality proposals. We are not looking for ‘winners’ for the $5m. We need quality proposals that will give us results with the investment.”
The amount given to the chosen projects will depend on how many programmes are chosen and how much they ask for. It is not a set amount.
While one organisation can submit as many pre-proposals as it wants, a single organisation such as a university can only receive one award for each cycle, which last three years.
There will be potential to extend that if a project is achieving good results but need more time.
Ms Al Mazroui admits the first cycle will be a “learning curve” and that the team are open to adapting and amending the structure.
“It will depend on the proposal,” she says. “Some proposals will go more into the technical side of it, maybe data modelling, so we need specific skills to look at the proposals to decide who will go through.”
The team has also been reaching out to institutions and organisations to alert them to the programme. Interest has been shown from China, Japan, India, Russia, Finland, the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia and from domestic entrants.