O sahara it's the biggest hot desert in the world. It is also the third largest desert, behind Antarctica and the Arctic, both cold deserts. The Sahara is one of the harshest environments on Earth, covering 9.4 million square kilometers.
Its size is almost a third of the African continent. The name of the desert comes from an Arabic word meaning “desert”.
Index
- Sahara desert map
- geography
- Flora and fauna of the Sahara desert
- Climate
- The effect of climate change
Sahara desert map
The Sahara borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Red Sea to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Sahel Savannah to the south. The huge desert covers 11 countries. They are: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.
Check out the Sahara desert map:
geography
The Sahara Desert has a variety of terrestrial features, but is most famous for the sand dune fields. The dunes can reach almost 183 meters in height. However, they only cover about 15% of the entire desert.
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Other topographic features include mountains, plateaus, sand and gravel covered plains, salt pans, basins and depressions.
Mount Koussi, an extinct volcano in Chad, is the highest point of the Sahara at 3,415 meters of altitude. Furthermore, the Qattara Depression in Egypt is the Sahara's deepest point, at 133 meters below sea level.
Although water is scarce throughout the region, the Sahara contains at least two permanent rivers (the Nile and the Niger). 20 seasonal lakes and huge aquifers, which are the main sources of water in the more than 90 large oases of the desert.
Water management authorities feared that the aquifers in the Sahara soon dried up due to overuse, but a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in 2013 found that “non-renewable” aquifers were still fed via rain and flow.
Flora and fauna of the Sahara desert
Despite the harsh and arid conditions of the desert, many plants and animals call the region home. There are approximately 500 species of plants, 70 known species of mammals, 90 species of birds and 100 reptilian species that live in the Sahara. In addition, there are several species of spiders, scorpions and other small arthropods, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
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Camels are one of the most emblematic animals in the Sahara. Large mammals are native to North America and ended up crossing the Bering Strait between 3 and 5 millions of years ago, according to a study by the Journal of Research on Agriculture and Environmental Management in 2015.
Camels were domesticated about 3,000 years ago in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula. The goal was to use these animals for transport in the desert, according to the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.
Camels, also known as “ships of the desert”, are well suited to the hot, arid environment. The humps on a camel's back store fat, which can be used for energy and hydration between meals. Camels store energy so efficiently that they can go more than a week without water and several months without food.
Other Sahara residents include a variety of gazelles, adax (a type of antelope), cheetahs, snails, desert foxes and wild dogs, according to the Sahara Conservation Fund.
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Many species of reptiles also thrive in the desert environment, including several species of snakes, lizards and even crocodiles, in places where there is sufficient water.
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Several species of arthropods also call the Sahara home, such as the beetle, scorpions and many types of ants.
Plant species in the Sahara have adapted to arid conditions, with roots reaching underground deep to find underground water sources and sheets that are shaped to minimize loss of water. moisture.
The most arid parts of the desert are completely devoid of plant life, but oasis areas such as the Valley of the Nile, support a wide variety of plants, including olive trees, date palms and various shrubs and grasses.
Climate
The Sahara is a dry, inhospitable desert and a verdant oasis every 20,000 years, according to a study published in Science Advances in 2019. The study authors examined marine sediments containing Sahara dust deposits from the past 240,000 years.
The team found that the cycle between a dry Sahara and a green one corresponded to small changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, which also drives monsoon activity.
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When the Earth's axis tilted the Northern Hemisphere only one degree closer to the Sun (about 24.5 degrees instead of today's 23.5 degrees), more sunlight was received, which increased the monsoon rains and thus sustained a verdant landscape in the Sahara.
Archaeologists have discovered cave paintings and other archaeological remains that clarified what life was like in the once green of the Sahara. Pieces of pottery suggest that about 7,000 years ago, ancient herders raised cattle and gathered plants in what is now an arid desert.
But for the last 2,000 years or so, the Sahara's climate has been reasonably stable. Northeast winds dry the air over the desert and drive hot winds toward the equator.
These winds can reach exceptional speeds and cause severe dust storms that can reduce local visibility to zero. Sahara dust travels in trade winds all the way to the opposite side of the globe.
Precipitation in the Sahara ranges from zero to about 3 centimeters of rain per year, with some places not seeing rain for several years. Occasionally, snow falls at higher altitudes. Daytime summer temperatures are often above 38 degrees Celsius and can drop to near-freezing temperatures at night.
The effect of climate change
The area of the Sahara desert has grown by nearly 10% since 1920, according to a study published in 2018 in the Journal of Climate.
While all deserts, including the Sahara, increase in area during the dry season and decrease during the rainy season, changes man-made climate combined with natural climate cycles are causing the Sahara desert to grow faster than the average.
The study authors estimated that approximately one-third of the desert's expansion was due to man-made climate change.
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One proposal to mitigate the effects of climate change is to install large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara. Farms would provide clean energy and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, and could also promote increased precipitation in the vicinity, according to a study published in 2018 in the journal Science.
Simulations showed that in areas with wind farms, there would be higher temperatures, especially at night, caused by wind turbines bringing hot air to the surface from higher levels in the atmosphere.
The researchers also estimated that rainfall over wind farms would double, thus increasing vegetation by about 20%. The solar farm simulations produced similar results.
The study's authors predicted that a large-scale wind farm in the Sahara would produce approximately 3 terawatts of electrical energy, while one A large-scale solar park in the Sahara would produce around 79 terawatts, which far exceeds the 18 terawatts of electricity consumed in 2017.
The extra energy could be directed towards larger scale projects, including increased agriculture and water desalination.
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