Brazil floods spark conspiracy theories about chemtrails and Alaska antennas

• Flooding in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil has sparked a number of conspiracy theories online.
• Some say the high-frequency active auroral research program is causing these extreme weather conditions.
• Scientists have rejected these theories.

The southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has been facing heavy rains since last week, and 143 people have so far lost their lives in the resulting floods, the agency said local civil protection.

Eduardo Leite, governor of Rio Grande do Sul, called the weather conditions on X “unprecedented” in the state’s history, adding that it would take “a kind of ‘Marshall Plan’ to rebuild.”

The state is prone to periods of heavy rains and droughts due to its position at the crossroads of tropical and polar climates.

Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology said the current extreme conditions were likely influenced by El Niño, the warming of sea surface temperatures.

Nonetheless, a number of strange online conspiracy theories have cropped up about what’s behind it all.

“What is happening in Rio Grande do Sul is definitely not natural,” said one user written the. “Let’s open our eyes!”

The user said he believed the cause of the heavy rain was HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a North American science project that uses antennas to study a portion of Earth’s upper atmosphere known as the name ionosphere.

The program has long faced unfounded rumors that it was designed to control the weather, with former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez even claiming it was the cause of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

Some now claim that the rains in Brazil were caused by toxic vapor trails, or “chemtrails”, released by the government and then activated by HAARP antennas in Alaska to modify the weather, AFP reported.

Vapor trails are condensation trails that occur when water vapor produced by burning jet fuel turns into ice crystals at high altitudes, where the air is cooler. The trails pose no public health risk, according to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

Carlos Nobre, who heads Brazil’s National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change (INCT), told AFP that scientists believed climate change had certainly played a key role in the Rio Grande do climate crisis. Sul.

“The warmer atmosphere can store much more water vapor, fueling more frequent and more intense precipitation events that lead to disasters like this,” he said, while also rejecting the theory HAARP.

“There is no way an instrument in the ionosphere can make weather events more extreme,” he said.

This follows recent heavy flooding in Dubai.

Dubai Media Office said in April that the city had experienced the UAE’s heaviest downpours since records began.

Once again, social media was full of claims about geoengineering – the idea that technologies could be used to alter the weather – with some suggesting that cloud seeding, where clouds are manipulated to produce more rain, had led to heavy rains in the city.

But scientists said the storms causing flooding in the city were likely made worse by the climate crisis, adding that the El Niño phenomenon had also helped intensify weather conditions.