Neom climate adviser warns futuristic city could alter weather patterns

A leading climate scientist advising Saudi Arabia’s mega-project Neom has warned that plans for its new futuristic city could alter weather patterns and the path of wind and sand storms, in yet another problem for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship scheme.

Neom is expected to be delayed or scaled back, as part of a review under an acting chief executive who recently took over the $500bn project, as Saudi Arabia grapples with lower oil prices, lower foreign investment and the huge scope of the development, the Financial Times has reported.

Now Donald Wuebbles, an expert in atmospheric physics and chemistry who serves as a paid adviser to Neom, has told the FT he has repeatedly raised the question of how the project’s linear city, ski fields and islands could change their local environments and weather systems.

He said the sustainability advisory committee was informed at a recent meeting that the issue had been escalated to a “higher priority” since the abrupt departure of the previous chief executive of Neom, Nadhmi al-Nasr. The committee reported to al-Nasr, a person close to Neom said.

“Part of my concern was, what impact is The Line and those [projects] going to have on the local environment . . . you start affecting the local weather and climate,” said Wuebbles, a University of Illinois professor of atmospheric science and among the lead authors of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

The damaging effects could include changes to rain patterns, amplification of wind and storms in the desert area, which have “not been studied enough,” he said.

The vast construction project includes plans for a skyscraper city of narrow buildings up to 500 metres high, encased in a mirrored glass facade initially designed to run along 170km.

The shape of cities and their typically higher temperatures can alter the surrounding air currents and cloud formations, research has shown. Academics from institutions including Princeton observed in a paper last year that summer storms typically intensify over urban areas.

Donald Wuebbles, an expert in atmospheric physics and chemistry, said he had raised the question of how Neom’s linear city, ski fields and islands could change their local environments © Donald Wuebbles/University of Illinois

The damaging effects of the project, such as a ski resort, could include changes to weather systems, rain patterns, amplification of wind and storms in the desert area, said Wuebbles © parametric architecture

A second member of the Neom advisory committee, who asked not to be named, confirmed some of the concerns Wuebbles raised.

Other issues raised included emissions from Neom’s use of cement and a slow transition away from combustion engine construction vehicles and machinery, Wuebbles said. Neom had commissioned academics to examine his concerns, but their findings had not been shared with him, he said.

Neom said it was a responsible development company and sustainability remained a core priority. Its goal was to lower its projects’ environmental impact “compared to traditional construction projects”, including in the use of building materials.

It pointed to the use of binder in concrete with lower embodied carbon than traditional cement, localised building material construction and a dedicated decarbonisation team to work across projects and suppliers.

Last year Neom’s chief environment officer Richard Bush took members of the advisory committee on a helicopter tour over Neom’s planned ski resort and area where The Line is being developed, landing on a planned golf course on an island where it visited half-built villas. Bush would be leaving Neom at the end of May, a person familiar with the matter said.

Another member of the advisory group, known as the environmental steering committee for Neom, is Usha Rao-Monari, a non-executive director of Australian mining group Fortescue who has also been a senior adviser to the Blackstone Infrastructure Group. A person close to her declined to comment.

The committee’s future is being reconsidered, as part of the broader review of the project by acting chief executive Aiman al-Mudaifer, Wuebbles said, adding “the whole operation has been slowed down by six to 12 months”.

Wuebbles said he was impressed with Neom’s use of technology, however, and hoped it could one day become a model for sustainable cities of the future. “They’re trying to do something like a moonshot: nothing like this has been done before, and there’s so much that could be learned.”