UAE Building a Mountain to Generate Rain

This article talks about the UAE researching the feasibility of building a mountain to create rain.

While I understand the basic concepts behind this I can't help but think that there are a lot of better, less resource-intensive techniques available to get the same results. Any thoughts?

I think it would be fun spending someone else's money on researching the possibility.

It would probably be cheaper to bring in super-tankers full of fresh water.

It does get relatively humid around the Persian Gulf (all that sun and all that shallow water) so some sort of scheme to condense the water out of the air might work. Maybe solar refrigeration? There is plenty of sun. Along the same lines, how much water is condensed in the myriad air conditioners and where does it go, to myriad small evaporation pans? Why not harvest it?

The benefit of harvesting water from the humid coastal air is that you don't have to worry about what to do with highly saline water left over from desalinization.

They have already some natural mountains in the northeast and I don't think they are getting enough water catchment.

I think they would bé far better building desalinization plans powered by solar energy.

the plus of this is if they dont need the cloud seeding then it would provide water for thousands of years with no moving parts and no maintinannce. tike a fod forest and swails takes quite a bit of energy to build but thwen can be productive for ever without further inputs seems like a good idea to me if they can pull it off

If they can get the prevailing winds to help out, they might be able to coerce nature to build a series of high sand mountains, say 1 to 3 thousand feet high. The existing high dunes appear to be acting as some kind of water collector, evidenced by the string of oases (collectively known as Liwa) along the northern front of that feature.

I also checked out harvesting condensate from air conditioners. Not a new idea. A home's central air conditioner could potentially meet the water needs of a small garden. Only problem is legionnaires disease, so recommended use is limited to subsurface irrigation, unless sterilized, but that conserves the water so it is a win-win.