Mansour Al-Mazrouei, head of the Department of Meteorology at King Abdulaziz University (KAU), said people living in this region must prepare for the worst scenario, such as torrential rains, excessive heat or severe dry winds.
“The prediction of such extreme weather events, using the global and regional high resolution models, is still a challenging task for the scientific community, especially the heavy rainfall that has a direct impact on society,” he said.
He pointed out that the current atmospheric analysis indicates that there could be more heavy rainfall next week in the Eastern Province, Qatar and Bahrain.  He said Jeddah is expected to get another wave of heavy rains in the next three days.
Al-Mazrouei said heavy rains in Jeddah last week might be linked to global climate change. “The extreme rainfall event that occurred in Jeddah was an environmental disaster that caused a lot of problems for the people,” he said.
“The people of Jeddah were greatly relieved after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah responded very fast to the disaster and gave immediate instructions to all government agencies to do the needful.”
Although there is no sufficient scientific evidence about the impacts of climate change on Saudi Arabia, the recent rains (90 millimeters in November 2009 and 111 mm in January 2011), however, indicate that there will be some consequences of climate change over Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, due to its geographical location, is not directly affected by climate change occurrences, “but, of course, there is some indirect impact,” Al-Mazrouei warned.