Dubai to build artificial mountains to induce rain

By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published May 5, 2016, 8:08 AM IST

Dubai being a desert country has flat lands and no mountains that would cause air to move upwards and form rain clouds.

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When winds hit the mountain, the air rises upwards and the water vapour in the air condenses. The high pressure and temperature forms rain clouds that would eventually bring rain.

Rainfall in UAE is very scanty. While in India the average rainfall a year is about 42 inches, in Dubai and surrounding places the average rain is hardly 5 inches annually. Now, a severe scarcity of water is being felt in the international city.

Dubai, known as the city of skyscrapers, is now seriously contemplating erecting man-made mountains to bring forth rains.

A detailed research to examine the effectiveness of building artificial mountains to help bring in the rains will be conducted.

The NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) based in America will make known its preliminary report about the probability of mountain construction by summer.

As proposed, the mountain would be constructed as high as 1.2-mile metre and it is estimated to cost about Rs 15.28 lakh crore (200 billion dollars). About Rs. 2.25 crore (4 lakh dollars) is reportedly being spent just to carry out a research exploring rain patterns in the UAE (United Arab Emirates).

If this initiative succeeds in the UAE, where rains are said to be very scanty, then it would become a worthwhile initiative says Bruintjes of NCAR

“We are basically evaluating the effects on weather and also contemplating how high it should be and how the slopes should be”.

Wonder what the rain gods have to say about this?

Dubai has been trying to induce rain to get a steady supply of drinking water in the desert for a while now. In fact, 186 attempts have been made to carry out cloud irrigation in the UAE at a massive cost of 5,58,000 dollars (Rs. 3.78 crore).

They even thought of removing all the saline content from ocean water to facilitate potable water supply but that initiative too was shelved as it was found to be unviable.

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