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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.
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.
In the southern Sahara, the drying trend was initially counteracted by the monsoon, which brought rain further north than it does today. By around 4200 BCE, however, the monsoon retreated south to approximately where it is today, [6] leading to the gradual desertification of the Sahara. [7] The Sahara is presently as dry as it was about 13,000 ...
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 ...
Satellite images released by NASA show pockets of plant life popping up all over the Sahara Desert after an extratropical cyclone drenched a large swath of northwestern Africa on Sept. 7 and Sept. 8.
The Kiffian culture is a prehistoric industry, or domain, that existed between approximately 8,000 BC and 6,000 BC in the Sahara Desert, during the African humid period referred to as the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 AD at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the Ténéré Desert. [1]
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 North African town of Ouargla, Algeria, which is located in the Sahara Desert, just experienced temperatures of 124 F, or 51 C, which may be the highest ever recorded on the continent.