"Preliminary satellite analysis shows accumulations of many tens to more than 200 millimeters of rainfall in the areas affected—roughly equivalent to what the region receives in a year. The rainfall accumulation estimates are based on NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM) data, which is one of the only options for systematically assessing precipitation in the Sahara over broad areas because ground-based rain gauges and radar stations are so scarce.“What’s also fascinating is that normally dry lakes in the Sahara are filling due to this event,” Armon added. Several of these lakes are visible in the image as dark blue areas, including one in Morocco’s Iriqui National Park (shown in detail within the inset circle).
Excerpted from the NASA Earth Observatory website, where you can pull the slider across the image to compare August and September. The map embedded below is from Bloomberg.
This earth we live on is indeed a living thing, and as such it will continue to change and develop.
ReplyDeleteGood news for a change
ReplyDeleteNot entirely. I neglected to include the Bloomberg link [fixed], where it is noted that...
DeleteIn Chad, the floods have swept across almost the entire country, resulting in at least 340 deaths and rendering 1.5 million homeless, according to the government. They’ve destroyed about 160,000 dwellings, submerged 260,000 hectares (642,470 acres) of land and drowned 60,000 livestock.
“With flooded farmland and drowned livestock, there will be a lot less food available now and in the future in a country where 3.4 million people already face acute hunger – the highest level of food insecurity ever recorded in Chad,” Jens Laerke, a United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman, said in a briefing last week.
Neighboring Niger is also hard-hit — with 400,000 made homeless and 273 killed — while Mali has recorded 62 deaths and 345,000 people are without shelter, according to the governments and aid groups working in the two nations. Food prices are rising in Niger as transport routes to markets become impassable.
Sahara pump still working? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_pump_theory
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