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The Sahara (/ s ə ˈ h ɑːr ə /, / s ə ˈ h ær ə /) is a desert spanning across North Africa.With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variations over the last few hundred thousand years, [49] oscillating between wet (grassland) and dry (desert) every 20,000 years [50] (a phenomenon believed to be caused by long-term changes in the North African climate cycle that alters the path of the North African Monsoon, caused by an ...
The precession of the equinoxes is regarded as the most important orbital parameter in the formation of the "green Sahara" and "desert Sahara" cycle. A January 2019 MIT paper in Science Advances shows a cycle from wet to dry approximately every 20,000 years. [3] [4]
The modern, arid Sahara. The Sahara was not a desert during the African humid period. Instead, most of northern Africa was covered by grass, trees, and lakes. The African humid period (AHP; also known by other names) was a climate period in Africa during the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic epochs, when northern Africa was wetter than today.
A view of lakes caused by heavy rainfall between sand dunes in the desert town of Merzouga, near Rachidia, southeastern Morocco on October 2, 2024.
Climate scientists used models to show historic intervals of a green, vegetated Sahara Desert that occur every 21,000 years. The Sahara Desert—Yes, That One—Remarkably Grows Green Every 21,000 ...
With the Sahel region being the most vulnerable and extensively affected by desertification, a project known as the Great Green Wall was launched in 2007 for the Sahara and Sahel. Its lofty goal is to create an 8,000-kilometer natural wonder over Africa's whole width in order to enhance the quantity of fertile land bordering the Sahara desert ...
One of the driest regions on earth is shifting green, as an influx of heavy rainfall causes vegetation to grow in the typically barren landscape. Satellite images released by NASA show pockets of ...