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‘It's not called a DANA or a Cold Drop. It is called HAARP GEOENGINEERING. And perhaps Morocco has something to do with it (...) to ruin its competitors in the middle of the orange and vegetable season’ (sic). This is what the content that is being spread on social networks claims.
But it is a conspiracy theory that has no scientific evidence. As we have already told Maldita.es, the AEMET (the Spanish meteorological agency) had been warning of the arrival of the DANA for days, it has not arrived by chance. Although some countries have artificial weather modification programmes in very specific places (for example Spain by seeding clouds with silver iodide) the results are very poor, achieving little variation in precipitation and without the capacity to create something similar to the DANA. On the other hand, the HAARP project is a programme that investigates an upper layer of the atmosphere and does not have the capacity to alter either weather or climate, it is not a weapon.
The Meteorological Agency had warned of the DANA several days earlier
The radars had detected it. Five days before the rains in Valencia, the AEMET had already warned on its Twitter account (now X) of the arrival of a DANA. The State Agency's researcher Juan Jesús González also warned that ‘this DANA, due to its characteristics and behaviour, had a lot of potential to enter the high impact group. One of those that can be remembered in the Mediterranean’. In addition, two days before Tuesday 30 October, this DANA was included in the ‘Special warning of adverse phenomena for October’.
To move the clouds of a DANA would require the energy of 25,000 nuclear bombs
As the meteorologist Benito Fuentes explains, the volume of precipitation that has been recorded would be around 700 billion litres of water and ‘there is no plane that can handle such a quantity’. He adds that, in order to evaporate it and move it towards the earth, it would require an amount of energy equivalent to more than double what is produced in Spain in a year or the energy generated by 25,000 nuclear bombs.
Thread by expert Benito Fuentes about DANA in Valencia. Source: Twitter (now X)Current weather modification techniques do not have the capacity to cause DANA
Throughout history there have been experiments to modify the weather (not the climate) artificially. Currently, there are countries that have programmes in place to do this on an ad hoc basis in some places. One of these actual techniques (not called geoengineering) is cloud seeding with silver iodide.
Cloud seeding with silver iodide that is mentioned as a technique to cause drought is actually a method used to try to make hail fall smaller and not damage crops or to increase rainfall. Its effectiveness is not clear in either case and the AEMET stresses that it can increase rainfall by 20% ‘at best’. Nothing similar to the rainfall recorded in Valencia.
What is (really) HAARP
There is no proof of the existence of an evil weapon called HAARP. At Maldita.es we have already told you that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a system that sends radio waves into a layer of the earth's atmosphere (the ionosphere) to investigate it. But it has no ability to affect climate or weather because its signal does not affect the lower layers of the atmosphere, which is where weather phenomena originate.
What is (really) geoengineering?
The word geoengineering is used by people who spread disinformation incorrectly. While they use it to refer to anything that they claim can alter the weather or climate, geoengineering is a field of study that investigates whether global warming can be counteracted by cooling the atmosphere on a planetary scale. This cooling would be achieved by reducing the solar radiation entering the Earth, for example by introducing tiny sulphur crystals into clouds to act as a mirror to the outside world, mimicking what happens naturally after some volcanic eruptions.
There is currently ‘no mature technology’ for geoengineering, according to the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC. The European Commission considers that geoengineering is not the ‘solution’ to climate change and poses an ‘unacceptable risk’ to people and the environment, but advocates further research.
The false narratives that claim that the objective of the alleged attack was the production of oranges
‘What a coincidence that the most affected regions are known for their agricultural production (...) in harvest time”. Messages like this one claim that Morocco's alleged attack was aimed at wiping out orange production in Valencia. But the orange harvesting season starts in October but lasts until June, that is to say, the only months in which oranges are not harvested are July, August and September. In addition to the 15 varieties of this fruit, only four are harvested during the months of October and November, according to the calendar of the Valencian Institute for Agricultural Research.
Harvest periods for oranges from the Valencian Institute of Agrarian ResearchOf the 219 municipalities that grow oranges in the province of Valencia, 42 have been affected by the DANA
In 2023, in the province of Valencia, the area under orange cultivation was 53,694 hectares (ha) distributed among 219 municipalities, according to the agricultural statistics of the Generalitat Valenciana. Of these, 42 municipalities with 18,300 ha appear on the list of municipalities affected by the DANA published by 20 minutos. In other words, 19% of the municipalities in which oranges are produced and 34% of the cultivated land have been affected by the DANA.
Emergency situations are a favourable situation for the emergence of hoaxes. Thus, at Maldita.es we continue to debunk hoaxes and disinformation related to the DANA and various conspiracy theories since last Tuesday 29 October. It is essential: trust only official sources and, when in doubt, it is preferable not to share them. Here you can consult tools and sources for information on the DANA that is sweeping across Spain.
