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UAE To Build Artificial Mountain To Improve Rainfall (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the changing-the-environment dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The United Arab Emirates is in the early stages of developing an artificial mountain that would force air upwards and create clouds that could produce additional rainfall. While the Middle East and Africa continues to get hotter, researchers are further motivated and more desperate for solutions to maximize rainfall. "Building a mountain is not a simple thing," said NCAR scientist and lead researcher Roelof Bruintjes. "We are still busy finalizing assimilation, so we are doing a spread of all kinds of heights, widths and locations [as we simultaneously] look at the local climatology." The specific location has yet to be decided on as the team is still testing out different sites across the UAE. "If [the project] is too expensive for [the government], logically the project won't go through, but this gives them an idea of what kind of alternatives there are for the long-term future." Bruintjes said. "If it goes through, the second phase would be to go to an engineering company and decide whether it is possible or not."

5 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. This doesn't make sense. by Harlequin80 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The engineering challenges for this are insane. Just trying to move that much materiel would break the bank. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of desal + irrigating the whole country comes in at a lower price....

    1. Re:This doesn't make sense. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is the exponential increase in material required to gain any useful elevation.

      The increase in material would not be exponential. It would be a quadratic function of the height.

  2. going for the record by reemul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds more like the UAE is jealous of Qatar's single project death-toll record for the World Cup and is determined to take the crown. The ads are probably already going out in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines for the sorts of disposable slave labor the region favors for large civil projects.

    --
    You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
  3. Re:Just the beginning? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's time to start steering our kids towards climatology and related fields.

    This hill will be built by civil engineers, not climatologists.

  4. Re:Exponential: Exponent=2. Big laugh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You have got to be kidding.

    A quadratic function (or polynomial of degree two) is indeed on the form you specified.

    But x to the 2nd power is not exponential, rather it's just an example of the quadratic function you mentioned, with b and c equal to zero and a equal to one.

    f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c, which with a = 1, b = 0 and c = 0 becomes f(x) = x^2, which is quadratic and the same as "x to the 2nd power"

    What IS exponential, is something like 2 to the xth power, or 2^x. But that's not what you wrote.