A recent study has pointed out that due to climate change, rainfall has returned to Africa’s Sahel region, more than 30 years after severe drought killed 100,000 people in the 1980s.
However, the author of the study says that this positive short-term impact is accidental and that by continuing to emit greenhouse gases, “we are seriously upsetting a natural system that we don’t fully understand”.
Sahel is a semi-arid region of western and north-central Africa, extending from Senegal to Sudan. A long drought, which started in 1968, led to the virtual extinction of crops and widespread loss of cattle in the region.
Research carried out by scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, United Kingdom, and published in Nature Climate Change, has shown how increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have caused global climate change, have triggered a return of seasonal rains to Sahel.
— source downtoearth.org.in