One of the wealthiest countries on earth now wants to control its own weather.
In the United Arab Emirates, officials are mulling the idea of creating an artificial mountain to boost rainfall in the region.
Through a process called "cloud seeding," in which the mountain will force cool air to rise and form rain clouds, the country hopes to make up for its dry desert climate.
Internationally, the average person consumes between 170 and 300 liters of water. In the UAE, it's closer to 550 liters, primarily due to luxuries like air conditioning and bottled water, as well as inefficient farming practices.
"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," Roelof Bruintjes, scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the project's lead researcher, told Arabian Business. "We will have a report of the first phase this summer as an initial step."
The NCAR, working with the US-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, hasn't determined when or where the project will take place, but the idea has been swirling for awhile.
In February 2015, UCAR received $400,000 in funding from the National Center of Meteorology & Seismology, which is located in the UAE, to determine how such a mountain could be built.
Bruintjes also told Arabian Business that if the project ends up being too expensive for the government, NCAR and UCAR will go to private engineering firms for additional funding and construction.
Even if the science backs up the project in theory, there is still some lingering uncertainty whether a mountain would do any good. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, recently told Vocativ that the best a mountain could do is produce a tiny amount of rain in a small area near the mountain itself.
UAE, with its desert climate, may simply not be a viable location to build a mountain for that purpose.
Instead, Pierrehumbert pushes for other approaches to creating potable water. Singapore, for example, has essentially turned itself into a giant sponge. Rainwater harvesting is one of Singapore's greatest infrastructural success stories.
In the UAE's case, the country could invest money in desalination plants that run on solar power, Pierrehumbert says.
UAE is no stranger to terrain-shaping projects, like its manmade recreation of the world map in luxury islands and the Palm Islands resort.
So while a manmade mountain may sound farfetched, it's really par for the course in a country that knows no limits.
