Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; 6000 years ago during the Holocene Climatic Optimum the Sahara desert was covered in lakes and vegetation. All this went away when the world cooled. Some of the poorest people in the world, descendants of survivors of the great drying, struggle to survive by scratching a living in the Sahel, the marginal land on the southern edge of the Sahara.
Africa climate change report reveals heat rising north and south, Sahel getting wetter
26 October 2020
“In recent months we have seen devastating floods, an invasion of desert locusts and now face the looming spectre of drought because of a La Niña event. The human and economic toll has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
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Africa has been warming progressively since the start of the last century, and in the next five years, northern and southern Africa are set to get drier and hotter, while the Sahel region of Western Africa will get wetter, WMO’s Regional Strategic Office Director, Filipe Lucio, told a press conference.
“Overall, Africa needs to take action. Action is needed today in terms of adaptation, but also is needed tomorrow in terms of mitigation”, Lucio said.
The agricultural sector is key to building climate resistance, since it is the dominant employer and it relies on the use of water and energy – both heavily implicated in climate change, he said.
Northern and southern areas under threat of aridity and desertification would benefit from reforestation, which helps to prevent water runoff and creates vegetation which supports the hydrological cycle.
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Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/10/1076162
Carbon obsessed organisations like the United Nations only see the negative side of global warming.
Imagine the benefits to Africa and Arabia, and other arid equatorial regions, if global warming restored the ancient Monsoons, which failed 6000 years ago after the end of the Holocene Optimum? Northern Africa and Arabia could once again be like the Garden of Eden.
I suspect we shall run out of fossil fuel long before we release enough CO2 to make the climate that benign. Perhaps when recoverable fossil fuel runs out, our descendants will maintain elevated atmospheric CO2 levels by using nuclear powered furnaces to roast limestone and other CO2 rich minerals, to alleviate the suffering of our planet’s CO2 starved plants. They will most certainly laugh at the public climate change follies of our times, just as we laugh at the irrational concerns of our ancestors.
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This is wrong. The Green Sahara is linked to orbital changes (Milankovitch forcing) and takes place periodically when high Northern Summer Insolation due to precessional changes displaces the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone northward allowing the African Monsoon to reach the Sahara once a year.
This has happened multiple times in the past during interglacials and during glacial periods, leaving a mark in the Mediterranean sapropels that display orbital frequencies. It is not due to the global climate being warmer or cooler.
Green Sahara: African Humid Periods Paced by Earth’s Orbital Changes
We could multiply CO2 levels by 10 and we would still not get a Green Sahara. We could increase global temperatures by +4 °C and we would still not get a Green Sahara. The monsoon has to reach there. The good thing is we don’t have to do anything. The Sahara will be Green again in about 9000 years. It’s time to buy some land there dirt cheap and in 9 millennia it will be very valuable.
Don’t the assertions in your comment put paid to the idea of a “global climate” then?
I have seen various sources that reckon this planet has anywhere from 5 to 30-something distinct regional climates, all of which respond to a wide variety of influences, most of them having nothing to do with human activities.
Whether the monsoon is displaced by orbital changes or by other forcings is immaterial.
As you note the orbital effect is also noticeable during glacial periods, but it is very much weaker than during interglacials.
It would require enough rise in climate forcing to greatly reduce El Nino conditions for the Sahara to green.
According to Wikipedia (whose link I clicked)…
“The covering of much of the Sahara desert by grasses, trees and lakes was caused by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun; changes in vegetation and dust in the Sahara which strengthened the African monsoon; and increased greenhouse gases, which may imply that anthropogenic global warming could result in a shrinkage of the Sahara desert. ”
I’m thinking, which is it; change of the earth’s orbit (what happened last time) or “implied” AGW (which cause cause the next time). By the way, aren’t grasses, trees and lakes better than dust and sand?
Not surprising that the folks working hard to diminish and then sequester atmospheric CO2 would also submit an Orwellian argument to get rid on the results.
Sick?
That hardly begins to describe them.
Fifteen years ago I was conducting an audit west of Timbuktu in Mali in the Sahel at the edge of the Sahara. An NGO was drilling a deeper well in a small village. This would allow the people to stay longer in their village in the dry season. When the well ran dry they would migrate down to the Niger river. They would be taken advantage of there and it was the worst time of year for them. I hope, for the sake of some good people, that the Sahel dampens sufficiently to give them water year round from the new well.
With [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling… warming… change, the world will be terminally green, and our posterity will not know deserts anymore.
“Urgent action” = “Send us more money so we can have endless meetings at exotic locations with plenty of food and drink”
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale the support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So we just have to learn to deal with the climate that Mother Nature has provided.
It’s time for Egypt to reincarnate its glorious kingdom. All hail Pharaoh!
I don’t know about restoring the pharaohs but I have witnessed what an astounding difference the availability of water to irrigate apparently dry and lifeless desert makes having seen what happened at El Kab, site of an ancient Egyptian walled town in Upper Egypt. Before water from the Aswan dam was brought to the area it was bone dry and inhospitable. A very few years later as irrigation was extended the area around the site was transformed to a lush green crop producing profusion of vigorous plant life. It was truly remarkable.
Why would anyone be against this?
Easy for misanthropes.to be against this.
An interesting article on the green Sahara; the last lakes there of.
Aramco World, May/June 2014
The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. I can’t believe their brains don’t just explode.
In case of proven vacuum, they don’t explode, but implode.
It’s worse than we thought.
Think of the children.
The Amazon rain forest relies on wind blown Sahara desert sand to survive.
This is antiscience, the wetter Sahel since 1995 is due to weaker solar wind states driving a warm AMO phase.
Whilst not the Sahel Lake Turkana in Kenya has had record inflows and is at levels not seen for decades.
am
Thanks for the tip.
The reports that Lake Turkana levels have risen from 500 to 800 meters (rising 300 meters) are not credible.
Here is the Google Map location for Kalokol
A surface profile on Google Map Pro from the lake shore at 361 m (1184 ft) to the centre of Kalokol at 383 m (1256 ft) is a rise of 22.8m (72 feet) over a distance of 5.45 Km.
A rise of 30 meters in lake level (not 300) seems to be more likely (though clearly still a terrible event for the people there).
It seems more likely that the reports are referring to the horizontal distance of flooding encroachment rather than a rise in lake level. The distance from the lake edge on Google Maps to the centre of Kalokol is 545 meters on a rising slope of 0.9 degrees.
No, that doesn’t work either : 5.45 km is 5,450m. (my bad).
Let’s look at some recent satellite data for Lake Turkana instead to try and get a better picture on how much the lake has risen.
Here is the Eodis WorldView of the northern end of the lake on 27th October 2020
and here is the image from 30th October 2019 for comparison
There are floods this year and lives have been put at risk with livelihoods damaged, but the rise in lake level is likely to be of the order of a few meters.
and while we are waiting for the sahara to green, move all of the solar farms of the world there……… please