Good news (unless you are a climate doomster) from the University of Illinois Chicago Climate Research Lab. Of course, it’s another climate model, so take it with a grain of salt – Anthony
The Sahara Desert is one of the driest areas in the world. It gets just 3 inches of precipitation per year — one-tenth of the amount of Chicago’s rain, sleet and snow.
But by the second half of the 21st century, rising global temperatures could make the Sahara much wetter, according to UIC researchers. By that time, the North African desert could see 75% more precipitation than its historical norm, as reported in Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. Under extreme climate conditions, rainfall is expected to increase in southeastern and south-central Africa, too, the researchers said.
“Changing rainfall patterns will affect billions of people, both in and outside Africa,” said lead author Thierry Ndetatsin Taguela, a postdoctoral climate researcher in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “We have to start planning to face these changes, from flood management to drought-resistant crops.”
Taguela said understanding how rising temperatures affect rainfall can help in the development of adaptation strategies. In the study, he used an ensemble of 40 climate models to simulate summer precipitation in Africa in the second half of the 21st century (2050-2099) compared with the historical period (1965-2014). Taguela analyzed models’ outputs under two climate scenarios: one that simulated moderate greenhouse gas emissions and one that simulated very high greenhouse gas emissions.
Both scenarios predicted that precipitation over Africa will generally increase by the end of the 21st century, with some regional variation. Notably, rainfall in the Sahara Desert is expected to increase by 75%, followed by a 25% increase in southeastern Africa and a 17% increase in south-central Africa. In contrast, researchers expect the southwestern region to be drier, with an anticipated 5% decline in precipitation.
“The Sahara is projected to almost double its historical precipitation levels, which is surprising for such a climatologically dry region,” Taguela said. “But while most models agree on the overall trend of wetter conditions, there’s still considerable uncertainty in how much rainfall they project. Improving these models is critical for building confidence in regional projections.”
For the most part, these projected changes are associated with the effects of climate change, as higher temperatures help the atmosphere hold more moisture, which in turn enhances rainfall. Changes in atmospheric circulation also played a part in reducing rainfall.
“Understanding the physical mechanisms driving precipitation is essential for developing adaptation strategies that can withstand both wetter and drier futures,” Taguela said.
Taguela is part of UIC’s Climate Research Lab under Akintomide Afolayan Akinsanola.
Posted this one the other day:
The U.S. coast is in an unprecedented hurricane drought – why this is terrifying –
The Washington Post August 4th 2016
Maybe The Post will publish a follow-up:
Climate Change to Make More Rain in the Sahara Desert- why this is terrifying –
The Washington Post to be announced
Climate change has always negative consequences, according to the great narrative – even the absence of something so destructive like hurricanes – but only until a hurricane appears.
Then the hurricane is 100% result of … climate change.
Another interesting thing is that a bit of warming usually just means that the climate of region A will be just like that of the neighboring region B that is a bit closer to the equator.
Noone ever complained about the climate of region B – en contraire, people love to spent their holidays there.
Yet it is a catastrophy somehow for region A to have the climate of region B.
??? “flood management to drought-resistant crops.”
Going from 3 inches per year to 5 inches per year is going to cause massive flooding?
By definition, it will still be a desert. In fact, it will be half of the definition of a desert.
Sensible humans opt for flood management and drought resistant crops regardless of climate change. We don’t need a grant seeker to tell us that.
More models?
A waste of time and money.
Even the IPCC admits that regional level modeling is worthless.
No; just more idiots.
SSP 2-4.5 – SSP 5-8.5 CMIP6
Depends. If attractive women wearing skimpy, next to nothing clothing, then I am all in on models.
Otherwise, more models? Maybe more brains (quote from a Zombies movie).
Climate change is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Climate Change is believing that experts who can not tell you that a hurricane with the power of 10.000 nuclear bombs will happen tomorrow
can tell you how the weather will be in 50 years.
And no, climate change is not like a box full of chocolates.
You only need to take a look at the back of the box to know what you get.
Forest told me that.
Completely different models, they have nothing in common beyond both being models.
Irrelevant – first you need to learn to walk(= predict current weather events correctly ),
before you can claim to run a marathon in world record time(= predict weather patterns in 50 years).
Without mastering the basics you can not be a grandmaster at all.
And running and walking a two different kind of movements.
There is a reason why the predictiion failure rate is so high.
Until they include solar variations, orbital mechanics, etc., there can be no long term forecast.
Treating the sun as a constant and the orbit as the “mean radius” and the earth tilt as a constant eliminates all sorts of computational complexities.
The devil is in the details and they have cast the details aside.
None of those are even in weather models for the simple fact that the amount that any of them is going to change in the next few hours or days is too small to matter.
Granted. But weather models are updated hourly.
Different starting point, different ending point, different methods entirely.
Climate models assume the starting conditions and then try to figure out what the new climate will be.
Weather models take the current weather conditions and try to project them forward to figure out what the weather will be in a few hours or days.
Most of the factors that are important to weather models are irrelevant to climate models.
Most of the factors that are important to climate models are irrelevant to weather models.
Climate change…. except we know what we will get and none of it chocolate.
Something has got to be done. If plants start growing in the Sahara, they’ll start sucking all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and plunge the world into an ice age. And Greta will get cold.
No worries. An Israeli soldier will give her a heavier coat and she can order a new Kermet the Frog hat from Amazon.
Story Tip:
https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northwest/topic/storm-brewing-climate-change-and-coastal-storms-western-alaska
Apparently the recent storm that devasted the Alaska coast is due to climate change. It seems that the sea ice that normally forms in October – November had not yet formed so the storm did not slow. The storm hit in early October (10/10).
Storms of this kind are not uncommon on the Alaska coast.
What a nightmare scenario! The Sahara turned green and life flourishing.
Just as it was 6000 years ago.
But than came those arabs with their camels and marlboros – and climate changed.
“then” came… lol
Your right… you’re.
75% increase to 3″ a year!!!
We’ll all be runed I tells ya!!!
No problem, ISIS can get its own climate tax for expansion as it takes over the Sahel region.
Oh Nooos, kids tomorrow will never know what a sandy desert is!
Oh the Travesty.
.
News flash:
Thousands of years ago the Sahara was a green paradise until
human emissions…Trump Policies… the Earth’s ever changing climate caused desertification of the areaHardly a green paradise. It was more of a Savannah with a few lakes.
Far more greener (and cooler) than today
My, probably outdated, information was it was a tropical rain forest.
It may have been, but you would have to go back to when the continents were in a different location. Since the formation of the Mediterranean, the region has alternated between Savannah and desert.
Why does auto-correct force me to capitalize Savannah? Does it think I’m referring to the city in Georgia, USA?
AI at work.
Maybe continental drift, but below is more aligned with what I recall. 25,000 years ago it was a rain forest.
About 5000 years ago the Sahara was a grassland where sheperds grazed their sheep.
yes during the roman warm period and the mwp
Another piece of the climate puzzle that doesnt line up with the official peer reviewed paleo reconstructions.
“yes during the roman warm period and the mwp”
No, the Roman Warm Period was ~ 2,000 years ago & MWP was 950 CE to about 1250 CE.
The Sahara was a rainforest, 25,000-14,000 years ago, then became a savanna until ~ 5000 years ago.
All well documented.& peer reviewed !!
Gosh have those guys been quieted for the last 25 years.
I wonder: Did the sheep and especially the goats strip the land of vegetation resulting desertification?
No climate change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
No sheep. Mostly standard African Savannah animals, just moved north.
What do you think is the origin of the crocodiles still living in the Sahara?
https://wildmanlife.com/matmata-last-nile-crocodiles-sahara/
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/discover-the-incredible-desert-crocodiles-that-live-in-the-sahara/
Illegal imigration
I don’t think so, they live there since Africa and America separated one from the other.
bwahahaha
And Hunters gathered Protein sources…hunted herding animals
“Both scenarios predicted that precipitation over Africa will generally increase by the end of the 21st century”
Now children! How many times have I told you “Models do not make predictions. They make projections” you have to keep this fact in mind whenever you write these scarry stories. Predictions have some uncertainty to consider before acting on them. These projections have no certainty. That’s right they are completely uncertain, without confidence, useless for planning and totally without merit as evidence. And they are the average of 40 scenarios that each can claim that same total lack of certainty.
By the way what is the uncertainty of the average of 40 events each with a known uncertainty?
The uncertainty of the average of 40 events, each with uncertainty σ, is approx σ/6.324. 6.234 being the approx square root of 40, and σ being the standard deviation. From Grok.
Is that right? Does it assume that all the events have the same uncertainty? And if the uncertainty is different for each one…?
Its a really nice question in any case. Be a great one for a weekly column of brain twisters. One of these ones that makes you stop and think!
Treating climate models as news…QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
The sky keeps falling and all the Chicken Littles keep running around worrying about it.
OK, which is it-ducks or chickens, huh?
We know its historical norm was much higher than present because of the life the Egyptians lived .
So it is is moving closer to what it it has been in the past.
You do not need a climate model to understand why. You simply need to understand how Earths orbital precession works to shift solar intensity across latitudes and seasons.
The Mediterranean is into a 300 year warming period in a 9000 year upward trend. Its surface temperature will soon reach 30C every summer and monsoon will set in. Rain depressions over the Sahara will be common occurrence.
As confirmation for your post:
Early Holocene greening of the Sahara requires Mediterranean winter rainfall
Abstract
The greening of the Sahara, associated with the African Humid Period (AHP) between ca. 14,500 and 5,000 y ago, is arguably the largest climate-induced environmental change in the Holocene; it is usually explained by the strengthening and northward expansion of the African monsoon in response to orbital forcing. However, the strengthened monsoon in Early to Middle Holocene climate model simulations cannot sustain vegetation in the Sahara or account for the increased humidity in the Mediterranean region. Here, we present an 18,500-y pollen and leaf-wax δD record from Lake Tislit (32° N) in Morocco, which provides quantitative reconstruction of winter and summer precipitation in northern Africa. The record from Lake Tislit shows that the northern Sahara and the Mediterranean region were wetter in the AHP because of increased winter precipitation and were not influenced by the monsoon. The increased seasonal contrast of insolation led to an intensification and southward shift of the Mediterranean winter precipitation system in addition to the intensified summer monsoon. Therefore, a winter rainfall zone must have met and possibly overlapped the monsoonal zone in the Sahara. Using a mechanistic vegetation model in Early Holocene conditions, we show that this seasonal distribution of rainfall is more efficient than the increased monsoon alone in generating a green Sahara vegetation cover, in agreement with observed vegetation. This conceptual framework should be taken into consideration in Earth system paleoclimate simulations used to explore the mechanisms of African climatic and environmental sensitivity.
I posted about that too.
They must be using similar ‘models’ as the weather forecasters for our area of WA. State. ‘Accuracy’ is like our weather… spotty.
What a bunch of claptrap. So the Sahara Desert averages 3 inches of precipitation a year. Models predict a 75 percent increase. That’s 2.25 inches more for a whopping total of 5.25 inches. Is there any place on earth where 5.25 inches of precipitation per year is considered a problem other than you wish you had more?
It is not a problem for anyone who thinks for himself.
It is a problem for those programmed to believe what they are taught to think.
I spent a couple of years working in the Sahara in the 2000s. It could do with some green grass and some trees.
From the paper:
I stopped reading
This lost me at “could” and the supposition of AGW is true….