The Sahara Desert Used to Look Like This…And May Again

Thousands of years ago, the Sahel region of Africa was a green, lush, tropical paradise. The Great Green Wall initiative is on a mission to restore that greenery in that region across the entire continent.

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The Great Green Wall is an epic project that aims to grow an 8,000 kilometer belt of vegetation across the entire width of the African continent. If completed, it would be three times larger than the Great Barrier Reef, and be the largest living “structure” on the planet. But can this massive geo-engineering project transform the landscape into the fertile, tropical place it once was?

So here’s the thing: this part of Africa is heating up. Particularly in the Sahel, which sits between the southern edge of the world’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, and humid savannas to the south. Vegetation is scarce in this semi-arid belt of land, and the U.N. has identified it as a hotspot for climate change.

Temperatures in the Sahel region are increasing 1.5 times faster than the rest of the world, and the Sahara desert is now 10% larger than it was in 1920. Periodic drought, deforestation, and unsustainable agricultural practices have reduced the productivity of the Sahel, causing desertification. This has led to massive food insecurity and displacement of people in the region.

And with temperatures expected to be 3-5°C warmer by 2050, these problems are projected to get worse.

But not all is lost! Remember when we said the Sahara used to be green? Well, that was about 11,500 years ago. Back then there was grass, lakes, and animals like hippos and antelopes! Dubbed the African Humid Period, also known as the “Green Sahara,” this era was the result of intense West African monsoons, which were stronger and brought more summer rainfall than today.

#SaharaDesert #Sahara #Africa #Algeria #ClimateChange #Environment #Desertification #Seeker

Read More:
Africa’s ‘Great Green Wall’ shifts focus to hold off desert
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/13/africa-great-green-wall-521292
The project called the Great Green Wall began in 2007 with a vision for the trees to extend like a belt across the vast Sahel region, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, by 2030. But as temperatures rose and rainfall diminished, millions of the planted trees died.

Could the Sahara ever be green again?
https://www.livescience.com/will-sahara-desert-turn-green.html
Sometime between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, after the last ice age ended, the Sahara Desert transformed. Green vegetation grew atop the sandy dunes and increased rainfall turned arid caverns into lakes. About 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers) of Northern Africa turned green, drawing in animals such as hippos, antelopes, elephants and aurochs (wild ancestors of domesticated cattle), who feasted on its thriving grasses and shrubs.

Africa’s ‘Great Green Wall’ could have far-reaching climate effects
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/africa-great-green-wall-trees-sahel-climate-change
To investigate those possible impacts, Pausata created high-resolution computer simulations of future global warming, both with and without a simulated wall of plants along the Sahel. Against the backdrop of global warming, the Great Green Wall would decrease average summertime temperatures in most of the Sahel by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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