Artificial Mountain Planned At UAE To Attract Rainfall
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has big plans----of creating an artificial mountain! The plan is to make it large enough to change the weather patterns and increase rainfall. Plans are in motion to build it and experts from the U.S.-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) are tying up, to make a model of the height and slope needed for it.
Thus, an artificial mountain would help to enhance the rainfall because of its effect on winds, causing them to lift air possessing evaporation, which would promote the formation of clouds. Later, they could be used to increase precipitation.
"What we are looking at is basically evaluating the effects on weather through the type of mountain, how high it should be and how the slopes should be," said Roelof Bruintjes, a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the project's lead researcher. "We will have a report of the first phase this summer as an initial step."
For the past decade, the UCAR has been involved in other projects, such as one in Wyoming, where clouds have been seeded over the Medicine Bow, Sierra Madre and Wind River mountain ranges. The attempt is to increase snowfall by 10 percent.
Such a mountain has to be massive, and the raw materials needed to create it would be difficult to acquire. The artificial materials required to complete it may be about one-quarter of the world's 2015 concrete output.
However, critics are doubtful that such a mountain would work. Many wonder whether the rainshadow effect that it would create would damage certain areas or not.
"I really doubt that it would work," said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford. "You'd need to build a long ridge, not just a cone, otherwise the air would just go around."
"Even if you could do that, mountains cause local enhanced rain on the upslope side, but not much persistent cloud downwind, and if you need cloud seeding to get even the upslope rain, it's really unlikely to work as there is very little evidence that cloud seeding produces much rainfall," he added.
