Rain on the dunes: this is an extremely rare weather event in the Sahara Desert, one of the driest places in the world. However, under the drops at the beginning of September, some areas will receive in a few days the equivalent of several years of precipitation. The cause, once again, is the consequences of global warming.
The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are overheating. For more than a year, surface waters have been breaking records, and this could be the source of the historic rainfall falling on the desert of Saharaexplains our journalist Simon Rose.
The cause: the effects of this heat on the intertropical convergence zone, a scientific name for the band of clouds and rain usually located above the equator.
But now it is much further north, above the Sahara. Southern Algeria, southwestern Libya, northern Niger… In the space of a few weeks, it could rain up to 10 times more than usual, according to forecasts.
The desert actually receives an average of less than 2.5 cm of rain in a year. All this could fall in just a few weeks. A very rare phenomenon, which statistically occurs once every thousand years.
- RFI
