Sahara Desert turning green in places due to heavy rainfall
One of the planet’s driest regions, the Sahara Desert has seen areas turning green following an influx of heavy rainfall. This has caused vegetation to grow in the usually barren landscape. NASA satellite images showed pockets of plane life appearing all over the desert after an extratropical cyclone had drenched a large part of northwestern Africa early in September 2024.
The landscapes in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya rare receive any rain. But now they are seeing traces of green sprouting, NASA Earth Observatory has found. Plants include shrubs and trees in low-lying areas including riverbeds, according to Sylwia Trzaska, a climate variability researcher at the Columbia Climate School
It is not unheard of for plant life to sprout out in the Sahara Desert following rain, as past research has shown. When parched regions in northern Africa receive heavy rainfall, the flora responds quickly, Peter de Menocal, president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said.
“When you get these really exceptional rainfall events, the dunes become these just incredibly verdant and flowered fields where the plants will just instantly grow for a short period of time to take advantage of,” he told ABC News.
The Sahara desert was once a lush and green place, between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago. A 2012 paper authored by De Menocal found that it was covered with vegetation and lakes. “It looks like a desert, and then when the rain comes, then everything starts greening very quickly,” Trzaska said.
Lakes that are usually empty have begun to fill up thanks to these recent events. Satellite analysis has found that rainfall accumulations are reaching half a foot in the affected areas. Parts of the desert typically see just a few inches every year.
While some rainfall every summer is normal during the West African Monsoon season, it is unusual for the Intertropical Convergence Zone, also known as the tropical rain belt, to reach as far to the north as the Sahara, according to De Menocal.
