0:34
- ABC News
- September 23, 2024
Why parts of the Sahara desert are turning green
Flora tends to sprout quickly once the typically dry landscape gets water.
0:34
Since mid-July, the Intertropical Convergence Zone has been sending storms into the southern Sahara, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.
These images, captured by #VIIRS onboard the #NOAA21 satellite on Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2024, use enhanced color to highlight rain accumulation in the Sahara Desert.
— Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) (@JPSSProgram) September 13, 2024
Clouds are shown in light cyan, while water is dark blue to indicate moisture content.
Credit: @NOAA/@CIRA_CSU pic.twitter.com/SkFsuUPfJb
While much of the torrential rain fell in sparsely populated areas, more than 1,000 people have died from flooding in parts of West and Central Africa, including Chad, Nigeria, Mali and Niger, The Associated Press reported.
About 4 million people across 14 African countries have been impacted by flooding, according to the World Food Programme.
Record-high ocean temperatures in the northern Atlantic ocean is contributing to the shift in the rain belt, bringing heavy rainfall typical of regions in the equator farther north, De Menocal said.
The transition from El Niño to La Niña likely affected how far north the Intertropical Convergence Zone moved, Trzaska said.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/flooding-2-gty-er-240923_1727107694727_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
Climate change could cause the rain belt to shift farther northward in the future, according to a study published in Nature earlier this year. But as the ocean temperatures elsewhere in the world catch up to the Atlantic the rain belt will likely shift back down, even south of the equator, De Menocal said.
\"Decades from now, when the larger oceans have warmed more uniformly, we expect the rain belt to actually go back to its original position, and it can even shift into the other hemisphere,\" he said.
The northward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone across West Africa has also likely contributed to a lull in tropical activity in the Atlantic Basin, according to experts.
Disturbances moving across this region are then entering the Atlantic over relatively cooler waters, Dan Harnos, a meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, told ABC News last month. With greater exposure to dry air from the mid-latitudes, the chances of a storm developing are hindered.
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