Everyone knows that the Sahara is the world's largest desert. It is a vast ocean of sand where the heat is so terrible that men and animals die of thirst. But did you know that it was once a beautiful green and a fertile place??
At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
Around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land. Scientists believe that, during this period, the earth's orbit wobbled slightly, causing a shift in the weather patterns. The monsoons which drench Southern Africa today shifted up, pouring heavy rain onto the Sahara, where it formed bodies of water. Plant life began to flourish and they were followed by animals and humans who established lively Civilizations. When weather patterns shifted again, the Sahara returned to being a desert once more.
**The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study.
(**Source : www.nationalgeographic.com)
At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
Around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land. Scientists believe that, during this period, the earth's orbit wobbled slightly, causing a shift in the weather patterns. The monsoons which drench Southern Africa today shifted up, pouring heavy rain onto the Sahara, where it formed bodies of water. Plant life began to flourish and they were followed by animals and humans who established lively Civilizations. When weather patterns shifted again, the Sahara returned to being a desert once more.
**The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study.
(**Source : www.nationalgeographic.com)