The Arctic is Warm

I continue to note that the Arctic has been able to retain its apparent dominant heat signature through all this. Sometime at least thirty years ago, the heat been transferred from the tropics into the Arctic made an incremental increase, which we may describe as delta H.  This has continued unabated ever since and now continues into next year.

This remarkable report describes the continuing observations.   The resultant changes have kicked us this winter, but has changed nothing else.  The sea ice is continuing to rot apace and if this is all correct, we are now entering a protracted period of semi open Arctic seas in the late summer.  I do think that the stage is set for a total breakup like event in 2012, although we have claims of ice reversal that seems creditable. 

The fact is that the statistical data systems continue to paint a warmer globe.  Yet this is a position that I deeply mistrust.  A shift of real heat into the Arctic is real and has been seen before and seems to follow a millennial cycle.  So far so good.  However, on a global basis, I think that the data gathering itself is subject to serious upward creep that we have been unable to correct properly for.  It is not much, but a half of a degree is all we have to begin with.  An error here and an error there always made on the upside soon accumulates to give you this.  The best data had exactly that problem in spades.

I not no one has the guts to correct it using annual tree rings.

That snow outside is what global warming looks like

Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong. But the data reveal a chilling truth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/uk-snow-global-warming

 George Monbiot

 guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 December 2010

A zebra stands in its snow-covered pen at Whipsnade Zoo, north of London on December 20, 2010 Photograph: Max Nash/AFP/Getty Images

There were two silent calls, followed by a message left on my voicemail. She had a soft, gentle voice and a mid-Wales accent. "You are a liar, Mr Monbiot. You and James Hansen and all your lying colleagues. I'm going to make you pay back the money my son gave to your causes. It's minus 18C and my pipes have frozen. You liar. Is this your global warming?" She's not going to like the answer, and nor are you. It may be yes.

There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the last two years in the UK are the result of heating elsewhere. With the help of the severe weather analyst John Mason and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, I've been through as much of the scientific literature as I can lay hands on (see my website for the references). Here's what seems to be happening.

The global temperature maps published by Nasa present a striking picture. Last month's shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. Temperatures in these regions were between 0.5C and 4C colder than the November average from 1951 and 1980. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon: the temperatures in western Greenland, northern Canada and Siberia were between 2C and 10C higher than usual. Nasa's Arctic oscillations map for 3-10 December shows that parts of Baffin Island and central Greenland were 15C warmer than the average for 2002-9. There was a similar pattern last winter. These anomalies appear to be connected.

The weather we get in UK winters, for example, is strongly linked to the contrasting pressure between the Icelandic low and the Azores high. When there's a big pressure difference the winds come in from the south-west, bringing mild damp weather from the Atlantic. When there's a smaller gradient, air is often able to flow down from the Arctic. High pressure in the icy north last winter, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, blocked the usual pattern and "allowed cold air from the Arctic to penetrate all the way into Europe, eastern China, and Washington DC". Nasa reports that the same thing is happening this winter.

Sea ice in the Arctic has two main effects on the weather. Because it's white, it bounces back heat from the sun, preventing it from entering the sea. It also creates a barrier between the water and the atmosphere, reducing the amount of heat that escapes from the sea into the air. In the autumns of 2009 and 2010 the coverage of Arctic sea ice was much lower than the long-term average: the second smallest, last month, of any recorded November. The open sea, being darker, absorbed more heat from the sun in the warmer, light months. As it remained clear for longer than usual it also bled more heat into the Arctic atmosphere. This caused higher air pressures, reducing the gradient between the Iceland low and the Azores high.

So why wasn't this predicted by climate scientists? Actually it was, and we missed it. Obsessed by possible changes to ocean circulation (the Gulf Stream grinding to a halt), we overlooked the effects on atmospheric circulation. A link between summer sea ice in the Arctic and winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere was first proposed in 1914. Close mapping of the relationship dates back to 1990, and has been strengthened by detailed modelling since 2006.

Will this become the pattern? It's not yet clear. Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute says that the effects of shrinking sea ice "could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia". James Hansen of Nasa counters that seven of the last 10 European winters were warmer than average. There are plenty of other variables: we can't predict the depth of British winters solely by the extent of sea ice.

I can already hear the howls of execration: now you're claiming that this cooling is the result of warming! Well, yes, it could be. A global warming trend doesn't mean that every region becomes warmer every month. That's what averages are for: they put local events in context. The denial of man-made climate change mutated first into a denial of science in general and then into a denial of basic arithmetic. If it's snowing in Britain, a thousand websites and quite a few newspapers tell us, the planet can't be warming.

According to Nasa's datasets, the world has just experienced the warmest January to November period since the global record began, 131 years ago; 2010 looks likely to be either the hottest or the equal hottest year. This November was the warmest on record.

Sod all that, my correspondents insist: just look out of the window. No explanation of the numbers, no description of the North Atlantic oscillation or the Arctic dipole, no reminder of current temperatures in other parts of the world, can compete with the observation that there's a foot of snow outside. We are simple, earthy creatures, governed by our senses. What we see and taste and feel overrides analysis. The cold has reason in a deathly grip.

Important Heat Flow Change in Gulf Stream

This is big news.  I posted four years ago now that the most likely explanation for the apparent changes in the climate and in particular, the specific erosion of sea ice in the Arctic was a specific change in the total heat been delivered by the Gulf Stream which we may simply label delta H.  Simply applying a delta H since the seventies perfectly explains our observations since then and led me to predict a possible pending complete breakup of the Arctic sea ice as early as 2012 and inevitably soon thereafter.

We continue to have warmer than normal Arctic conditions.  However the Navy is claiming that the ice has finally began to thicken again over the past two years.  So far it is the only available evidence that the warming delta H may have ended.  If it has ended, then an Arctic breakup is aborted.

This report tells us that for the past forty years that the Labrador Current was much weaker.  This means several things.

1                    A strong current mixed vigorously with the Gulf Stream, partially cooling it.  This was hugely reduced when the current abated.

2                    A warmer Gulf Stream carried more heat or delta H as a consequence into the Arctic and was instrumental in eroding the sea ice.

3                    An offsetting counter flow somewhere else took over and this had little effect on the Gulf Stream.  The net effect was to modestly strengthen the Gulf Stream.

Now the geological record shows us that the Gulf Stream has been much warmer by a couple of degrees and that long cyclic warm eras are common.  If my own interpretation holds up, we are entering a prolonged warm period in Europe similar to the Medieval optimum as part of an apparent thousand year cycle that I have been able to identify on a preliminary basis over 5,000 years.

I would be quite surprised if the implied claim of no similar events for 1800 years were to hold up.  Right now we have a well positioned coral reef able to act as a monitor.  There will be others and we may be able to go further with this form of testing.

ATLANTIC CIRCULATION ON THE FASTTRACK FOR CHANGE

Analysis by Tim Wall 

Tue Jan 4, 2011 05:55 PM ET 

http://news.discovery.com/earth/atlantic-circulation-on-the-fasttrack-for-change.html

Bell-bottom jeans, Abba, and the Labrador Current -- one of the three is not making a retro comeback. Temperature-tracking coral reefs indicate that the circulation of water in the Atlantic Ocean has changed dramatically since the 1970's.

That could be part of the reason areas in the northern hemisphere have had harsh winter storms and summer droughts say researchers.

The evidence for changing currents comes from ancient gorgonian coral reefs growing off the coast of Nova Scotia. The reef was studied by a team of biochemists and oceanographers from Switzerland, Canada, and the United States.

Like most organisms, corals are what they eat and changes in their diet are recorded in the reef structure.

The Canadian corals showed that the cold, south-bound Labrador current is losing ground to the warm, north-bound Gulf Stream current. The corals of the deep north Atlantic have been feasting on nutrient-rich warm water since the 1970's.

The researchers looked at the concentrations of a certain isotope of nitrogen, called delta 15. Different concentrations of the isotope allow scientists to trace a creature's food sources.

The levels the researchers found in the Nova Scotian coral indicated the coral had been feeding heavily on nutrients brought north from the subtropical regions for approximately 40 years.

The coral had been feeding primarily on subarctic nutrients for the previous 1800 years.

That abrupt change in food sources caused by changes in currents coincides closely with the onset of observable changes in Earth's climate caused by industrialization.

"The researchers suspect there is a direct connection between the changes in oceanic currents in the North Atlantic and global warming caused by human activities," said one of the participating institutions, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology in a statement to the Associated Foreign Press.

   

The coral reef research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Recent heavy snowfalls and harsh winter storms along with droughts and heat waves in the summer, could be explained by a changes in the circulation of the Atlantic's water, say climate researchers. A 2004 paper by NASA explained the possibility of melting arctic sea ice triggering colder weather in Europe and North America.

As my colleague, Mr. Cox, pointed out in the above blog post, the term global warming is a misnomer in many senses. Humanity faces global climate destabilization. The weather patterns our agriculture and industry have adapted to over the centuries are changing rapidly.

Swine Flu in Britain

The take home here is that we need to strengthen our immune systems with Vitamin D which happens to be commonly deficient throughout the northern lands like England.

The argument of the writer is anti vaccine, which has merit for another reason.  Flu vaccines are of doubtful value at best as we are dealing with a virus and it is apparent few actually benefit.  In the meantime we have a commercial infrastructure beating the drum to sell their yearly fix that have a commercial interest in having us get the vaccine every year.

As the writer observes, this is hardly a wise strategy in terms of a robust immune system.

I go a little further.  Immunity prospers with broad exposure to the whole range of available pathogens.   Today we have effectively a global population and no creditable pandemic that lasts at all.  Thus boosting immunity with vitamin D is a sound strategy to tackle the occasional flu.  If all have high immunity, then any pathogen is bound to die out.

I personally take 2000 mgs per day of vitamin D.

Swine flu pandemic outbreak sweeping through Britain even though 70 percent were vaccinated last year

Monday, December 27, 2010

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com 

http://www.naturalnews.com/030845_Britain_swine_flu.html

(NaturalNews) A swine flu pandemic is sweeping through Britain despite the fact that 70 percent of Britain's over-65 population was vaccinated against swine flu last year. This year, that number is nearly the same -- 68.5% -- but flu vaccine proponents insist that until everyone is vaccinated, the flu will continue to infect people.

What these vaccine advocates absolutely will not admit, however, is how many of those who are sick with the flu this year also got vaccinated last year. This little detail is left out of every mainstream media report on vaccines and the flu. They simply refuse to mention this all-important number, leaving readers to leap to the incorrect conclusion that only those who were not vaccinated get sick with the flu.

Most infected patients were previously vaccinated

That assumption is false. In fact, of the 450 critical care beds in England that are now occupied by flu patients, I have no doubt that most of those infected patients are people who received flu vaccines in the past.

Such statistics are never made available to the public or the press, of course. To release such statistics would expose the Great Lie of the vaccine industry: That flu vaccines simply don't work on 99 percent of people!

In fact, the people who are most susceptible to catching the flu are precisely the very same people who get vaccinated. Why is that? Because vaccines weaken the immune system in the long run, leaving you more vulnerable to future infections. They deny your immune system the opportunity to practice its own adaptive response to invading microorganisms or viruses, thereby causing your immune system to atrophy in the same way that a wheelchair-bound person will experience leg muscle atrophy.

The immune system is a lot like a muscle: Use it or lose it!

But flu vaccines provide weakened viruses to the immune system (along with other preservative chemicals that can be extremely dangerous to neurological health). It's sort of like working out your muscles at the gym but having your trainer do all the heavy lifting for you. Obviously you're not going to have very strong muscles in the end because your body won't need to invoke a very strong adaptive response.

The same is true with vaccines and the flu: If your body is exposed to weakened flu viruses year after year, it gets lazy and weak, and when it one day comes into contact with a full-strength virus circulating in the wild, it's not in good enough shape to handle the challenge.

Vitamin D deficiency is widespread in Britain

At the same time this is going on, a person who is vitamin D deficient will also have an alarmingly weak immune system response because vitamin D activates the immune system to do its job. In people with extremely low vitamin D levels, even vaccines containing weakened viruses won't solicit an antibody response. But instead of testing patients for vitamin D deficiency and prescribing that with the vaccine, conventional medical doctors and contagious disease authorities robotically urge everyone to just "get multiple vaccine shots" as if following one failed vaccine with yet another failed vaccine will somehow make them both work.

That's idiotic, of course. And the other idiotic thing about all this is that if people had sufficient levels of vitamin D circulating in their blood, they wouldn't need seasonal flu vaccines in the first place! That's because a strong, healthy immune system with lots of circulating vitamin D is universally effective at halting ALL seasonal flu strains, with near 100% success in those with vitamin D levels between 50 - 70 (ng/dL).

The three main reasons behind Britain's flu pandemic

So the real reason Britain is suffering a swine flu pandemic right now is actually three-fold:

#1) It's winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and Britain is so far north (of the equator) that the people living there aren't currently generating any vitamin D whatsoever. This makes virtually the entire British population ridiculously vitamin D deficient throughout the winter.

#2) The majority of the British population has been subjected to flu vaccines in previous years, weakening their immune systems and making them more vulnerable to this year's flu strains.

#3) The flu strain itself is so successful in the wild precisely because so many Britons walk around in chronic states of immune suppression (from vitamin D deficiency, chronic stress, poor dietary habits and so on). This creates a "viral breeding ground" which encourages more rapid virus mutations that make vaccines obsolete anyway.

The question you are not allowed to ask vaccine quacks

The vaccine-pushing quack medical community believes that if they could magically convince 100 percent of the people to get vaccinated, they would have this problem licked. In their own minds, they have unscientifically convinced themselves that a vaccine equals automatic and full protection against a flu virus.

And yet even they won't dare ask this simple question: Of all the people sick from the flu who are right now lying in Britain's hospital beds, what percentage were vaccinated against the flu last year or this year?

The answer to that question will expose the outright fraud of the vaccine industry because the answer is a very large number. No one in the medical industry dares ask that question, of course, because they realize that delving into the actual re-infection rate of flu vaccine recipients would expose their quackery and fraud, causing yet more people to lose faith in vaccines which are, after all, sold based entirely on misplaced faith and clever propaganda.

The flu vaccine propaganda, of course, demands that people never be allowed to collide with the scientific facts about how many people who are vaccinated against the flu still catch the flu anyway. (The flu re-infection rate.) That's why you will NEVER see an honest answer to this question released by hospitals, vaccine companies or vaccine-pushing doctors.

Keep taking your flu jabs, everybody. But don't ask whether they actually work, because that question isn't allowed to be asked in the cult of medicine that dominates the sick-care landscape around the world today.

We wouldn't want actual science to interfere with a really profitable con job now, would we?

Ancient Human Remains Twice Previous Age

This has been reported on quite a bit.  This shows a good picture of one of the teeth.  The age claim is certainly pushing the envelope.  Yet this is needed.  So much theory has been spun out of mere data points, that giving it all a good kick is a very good idea.  The good news is that each year sees more shovels at work and more sites investigated and expanded.

Rather important in the Middle East were everything had to pass.  The region itself was originally pleasantly forested and provided plenty of refugia for populations of different species.  It is poorly understood that the actual population density on the ground during the Bronze Age was huge as compared to other similar regions at the time and filled in what are today barrens.

Thus a great deal will need to be done and we all will have to be patient as we slowly figure it all out.

Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel

By DANIEL ESTRIN, Associated Press – Mon Dec 27, 6:13 pm ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_ancient_teeth

JERUSALEM –

Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.

A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old

"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.

"Based on the evidence they've cited, it's a very tenuous and frankly rather remote possibility," Mellars said. He said the remains are more likely related to modern man's ancient relatives, the Neanderthals.

According to today's accepted scientific theories, modern humans and Neanderthals stemmed from a common ancestor who lived in Africa about 700,000 years ago. One group of descendants migrated to Europe and developed into Neanderthals, later becoming extinct. Another group stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens — modern humans.

Teeth are often unreliable indicators of origin, and analyses of skull remains would more definitively identify the species found in the Israeli cave, Mellars said.

Gopher, the Israeli archaeologist, said he is confident his team will find skulls and bones as they continue their dig.

The prehistoric Qesem cave was discovered in 2000, and excavations began in 2004. Researchers Gopher, Ran Barkai and Israel Hershkowitz published their study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Japan Uranium Extraction Efforts

Accepting that a lot of uranium is available from the black current of Japan and that it may be recovered at around twice current cost structures, it still is a challenge to do.  However, both vanadium and molybdenum have ready markets able to absorb large supplies and that could well help out.

The method described seems to entail a seaweed farming operation followed somehow with fairly efficient extraction.  Certainly a huge amount of waste biomass will be produced and that must be economically consumed.

At this point I see a lot of hand waving and I do not yet believe any of it.

Certainly recognizing the weed as a natural collector of the required metals is a great start.  Perhaps we can turn this into a useful feedstock of some sort that can feed other processes.  At the worst it will make a great natural soil addition. 

Scaling up Uranium from Seawater extraction

DECEMBER 20, 2010

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/scaling-up-uranium-from-seawater.html

Japan has lab scale work for extraction of uranium from seawater that is about twice the current cost of traditionally mined uranium.

Japan has proposed various scaling up plans for uranium from seawater They look at the Black Current in the ocean off of Japan and how much materials it is moving. They would put uranium extraction materials in its path and collect uranium and other resources as they are moved past the materials that would trap the resources.

The Black Current off Japan carries approximately 5.2 million tons a year. This amount is equivalent to the earth's remaining inventory of this ore. At present, Japan consumes about 6,000 tons of uranium per year. So even if only 0.1 percent of what flows along Japan can be recovered.

Resources carried by the Black Current

Rare metals  Annual Amount

Total

(unit: 10,000 tons)  Annual amount per cross section of Black Current(tons/m2)

Cobalt            16     0.005

Titanium         170     0.059

Vanadium         340     0.119

Uranium          520     0.182

Molybdenum     1,580   0.553

* Average speed of Black Current       1.75 m/s

* Average flow amount of BlackCurrent  50 millions m3/s

Using large scale engineered Seaweed for uranium extraction

In 2008, The Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI) recommended Japan mass-culture seaweed to collect natural resources such as bio-ethanol and uranium.In the “Apollo and Poseidon Initiative 2025,” MRI suggests that Japan cultures gulfweed, which can grow more than 2 metres high a year in the sea. The plants could also absorb carbon dioxide and purify the seawater, and can be used as non-food alternative energy sources for bio-ethanol. In April, MRI plans to inaugurate a consortium comprising public research institutes and manufacturers to move the plan forward. Using advanced molecular and gene-engineering technologies, MRI estimates that Japan would be capable of producing 65 million metric tons of gulfweed a year. The annual rate of recovery is 40% of Japan’s total uranium consumption. (19 February 2008, Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun)

Using polymers, the total amount of uranium recovered from three collection boxes containing 350 kg of fabric was over 1 kg of yellowcake after 240 days of submersion in the ocean. So 65 million tons of seaweed might get 195,000 tons/year of uranium based on a comparable efficiency.

Japan uses 7589 tons of Uranium per year now. 40% of Japan's consumption would be about 3000 tons of Uranium per year.

Ionizers Bombard Abu Dhabi Desert with Thunderstorms

This is an extraordinarily important development.  I have posted on the advent of the Eden machine which uses sunlight to draw down humidity from the atmosphere to water an immediately adjacent tree or two.  The draw back was that it needed to store energy and needed high humidity to perform well.  This could be solved by operating on the edge of deserts and slowly moving into the desert as the growing trees slowly brought along the humidity.

This system will completely accelerate the process by inducing multiple local thunderstorms that support the increasing humidity that can then support the restoration of forests, which expands the whole process far quicker.

Thus a first phase would cover a chosen area were the upwind boundary area gets enough humidity with ion emitters.  If we are clever, the power can be produced by windmills and it can also be a power plant.  The ionizers will be turned on only when conditions permit.

With a long band of ionizers in place the thunderstorms will strike in a downwind band.  This will need to be captured with plenty of trees.  Over time the build up of vegetation will stabilize humidity and bring on general rainfall.

Again, the big trick is to determine the far edge of the desert for doing all this because the expanding green belt supported by the Eden machine protocol will cause steady down wind expansion.

The ionizers by themselves are a great start but thunderstorms are naturally inefficient and spotty.  It is the trees that stabilize it all.

The entire Sahara and the deserts of the Middle East can be now carpeted with schools of wind turbines and ionizers.   The resulting thunderstorm bombardment will recharge ground water everywhere and soon bring on natural forest regeneration all of which increases and supports increasing general humidity.

In time, and much sooner than I had ever hoped, such an enterprise would completely reforest the whole region.  We can do it.  In fact, once the infrastructure is put in place, the forest recovery will be almost exponential and completed to full coverage inside perhaps fifty years.

Have scientists discovered how to create downpours in the desert?

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Last updated at 10:22 AM on 3rd January 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1343470/Have-scientists-discovered-create-downpours-desert.html

Technology created 50 rainstorms in Abu Dhabi's Al Ain region last year

For centuries people living in the Middle East have dreamed of turning the sandy desert into land fit for growing crops with fresh water on tap.

Now that holy grail is a step closer after scientists employed by the ruler of Abu Dhabi claim to have generated a series of downpours.

Fifty rainstorms were created last year in the state's eastern Al Ain region using technology designed to control the weather.

Dry as dust: The sand dunes of the United Arab Emirates, which sees no rain at all for months. Now a secret project has brought storms to Abu Dhabi

Plan: Scientists are attempting to make clouds in the desert to give man control over the weather

Most of the storms were at the height of the summer in July and August when there is  no rain at all.

People living in Abu Dhabi were baffled by the rainfall which sometimes turned into hail and included gales and lightening.

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS KICKING UP A STORM

The Metro System scientists used ionisers to produce negatively charged particles called electrons.

They have a natural tendency to attach to tiny specks of dust which are ever-present in the atmosphere in the desert-regions.

These are then carried up from the emitters by convection - upward currents of air generated by the heat release from sunlight as it hits the ground.

Once the dust particles reach the right height for cloud formation, the charges will attract water molecules floating in the air which then start to condense around them.

If there is sufficient moisture in the air, it induces billions of droplets to form which finally means cloud and rain.

The scientists have been working secretly for United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

They have been using giant ionisers, shaped like stripped down lampshades on steel poles, to generate fields of negatively charged particles.

These promote cloud formation and researchers hoped they could then produce rain.

In a confidential company video, the founder of the Swiss company in charge of the project, Metro Systems International, boasted of success.

Helmut Fluhrer said: 'We have achieved a number of rainfalls.'

It is believed to be the first time the system has produced rain from clear skies, according to the Sunday Times.

In the past, China and other countries have used chemicals for cloud-seeding to both induce and prevent rain falling.

Last June Metro Systems built five ionising sites each with 20 emitters which can send trillions of cloud-forming ions into the atmosphere.

Over four summer months the emitters were switched on when the required atmospheric level of humidity reached 30 per cent or more.

While the country's weather experts predicted no clouds or rain in the Al Ain region, rain fell on FIFTY-TWO occasions.

The project was monitored by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's major centres for atmospheric physics.

Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, said: There are many applications. One is getting water into a dry area.

'Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.'

The savings using the Weathertec technology are huge with the system costing £6 million a year while desalination is £45 million.

Building an ionising system is about £7 million while a desalination plant would be £850 million and costs a lot more to run.

Some scientists are treating the results in Al Ain with caution because Abu Dhabi is a coastal state and can experience natural summer rainfall triggered by air picking up moisture from the warm ocean before dropping it on land.

But the number of times it rained in the region so soon after the ionisers were switched on has encouraged researchers.

Professor Peter Wilderer witnessed the experiments first hand and is backing the breakthrough.

The director of advanced studies on sustainability at the Technical University of Munich, said: 'We came a big step closer to the point where we can increase the availability of fresh water to all in times of dramatic global changes.'