Greening: Rare, Heavy September Rainfalls Have Brought Back Lakes In The Sahara!

North Africa seems to be greening as a result of climate change, which mostly occurs naturally.

Satellite photos and studies have shown that the Sahara desert has been shrinking over the past 40 years, e.g. read here and here.

The latest news is from the southeastern Moroccan desert, which is among the driest around the world, where it is reported to have gotten up to 100 mm of rain within a 24 hour period in September. Hard hit were villages 400 miles from the capital city of Rabat, including Tata, reports Al Jazeera here.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory 

Once dry lakes are filling again

“What’s also fascinating is that normally dry lakes in the Sahara are filling due to this event,” said Moshe Armon, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Several of these lakes are visible in the image as dark blue areas, including one in Morocco’s Iriqui National Park (shown in detail within the inset circle).

“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” added Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology. See more photos here.

“Preliminary satellite analysis shows accumulations of many tens to more than 200 millimeters of rainfall in the areas affected—roughly equivalent to what the region receives in a year. The rainfall accumulation estimates are based on NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM) data,” NASA reported.

The rains, of course, are welcome, making a harsh region a bit less harsh for those living there. Nothing you’ll hear about in the climate propaganda media.

Hat-tip: Snowfan here.

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