Morocco Denies Cloud Seeding Caused Devastating Floods, Cites Tropical Air Mass

Houssein Youabed, head of communication at the Directorate General of Meteorology (DGM), assured that the showers that hit the south-eastern and Atlas regions are not due to cloud seeding, but rather to "a strong influence of a very unstable tropical air mass, product of the exceptional rise of the Intertropical Front (ITF) towards the southern regions".

For his part, Nizar Baraka, Minister of Equipment and Water, recalled that Morocco has carried out 121 cloud seeding operations over the past five years (2017-2021) as part of the "Al Ghaith" program. Responding to a written question from a deputy of the parliamentary group of the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), he added that four operations were carried out from November 2022 to September 9, two using ground generators and two with planes.

Cloud seeding is a technique aimed at causing precipitation, by injecting silver iodide or sodium chloride into clouds to stimulate the rapid formation of ice crystals that eventually fall as snow or rain, depending on weather conditions.