Heavy precipitation hitting vulnerable communities in the UAE and Oman becoming an increasing threat as the climate warms

From April 14–15 2024, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the northern parts of Oman were hit by exceptionally heavy rainfall causing massive disruption in infrastructure and public life in the area and leading to at least 20 fatalities in Oman and four in the UAE.

The extreme rainfall event was associated with a low-pressure system, initially originating from mid latitude Eastern Europe, that induced violent storms, also bringing heavy rainfall to other parts of Asia.

In Dubai, most of the rain fell on Monday 15th of April and exceeded all previous records of daily rainfall in the last 75 years, when records began (UAE government, 2024).

Researchers from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom collaborated to assess to what extent human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the weather conditions at the time of the most impactful floods.

To characterise the event we focus on daily maximum precipitation (RX1day). As this event was the highest on record we also looked at the annual maximum, which usually falls within this season. Using this RX1day variable has the additional advantage that it is one of the routinely calculated indices in most climate projections, thus making it easy to compare our analysis with published literature.

For the spatial definition of the event we analysed the region that saw the biggest impacts during the 1-day heavy rainfall event, indicated by the red box in Figure 1. The region includes the UAE, the northern part of Oman, Bahrain and a small part of Saudi Arabia.