Oil and water: Studying pressing environmental dilemmas in the Middle East
On a black monitor in a dusty office in MIT’s Green Building, an iceberg the width of three football fields wallows in the shallow, briny waters of the Persian Gulf — also known as the Arabian Gulf — 6,000 miles from its home. Facing the screen is Maryam Rashed Alshehhi, a visiting assistant professor and recent doctoral graduate from the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Using advanced climate models, Alshehhi is estimating how quickly an iceberg will melt in one of the warmest regions in the world, and how existing water and wildlife, long accustomed to a parched dessert climate, will react. The mirage-like simulation is not entirely hypothetical. Engineering firms in the UAE have recently touted plans to tow chunks of ice wrapped in plastic from Antarctica to the coast of the gulf to be used as fresh drinking water. There is perhaps no one...