(CNN) – There’s not much green in the Sahara Desert, but after an unusual influx of rain, the color can be seen from space infiltrating parts of one of the driest places in the world.
Satellites recently captured flourishing plant life in parts of the typically arid southern Sahara after storms moved there at times when they shouldn’t. It has also caused catastrophic flooding. And scientists say a warming world due to fossil fuel pollution is making both phenomena more likely.
Precipitation north of the equator in Africa typically increases from July to September, when the West African monsoon comes into play.
The phenomenon is characterized by increased stormy weather that breaks out when humid tropical air near the equator meets hot, dry air from the northern portion of the continent. The focus of this stormy weather, known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, moves north of the equator in the summer months of the northern hemisphere. Much of it moves south of the equator during the warm months of the southern hemisphere.
But since at least mid-July, this zone has moved further north than it should, sending storms as far south as the Sahara, including parts of Niger, Chad, Sudan and even as far north as Libya, according to data from the Prediction Center. NOAA Climate Report.
As a result, these parts of the Sahara Desert are two to more than six times wetter than they should be.
There are two potential causes for this strange northward shift, according to Karsten Haustein, a climate researcher at the University of Leipzig in Germany.
The transition from El Niño to La Niña has influenced how much this area has moved north this summer, Haustein said. El Niño, a natural weather pattern marked by warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, typically leads to drier-than-normal conditions in the humid parts of West and Central Africa. The Girl, or even a nascent version of her, can have the opposite effect.
A warming world is the other significant factor.
“The Intertropical Convergence Zone, which is the reason for the greening of (Africa), moves further north the warmer the world becomes,” Haustein explained. “At least, this is what most models suggest.”
A study published in the journal Nature in June found that movements further north from this area could occur more frequently in the coming decades as levels of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuel pollution, increase and the world gets hot.
The displacement is not only turning deserts green, it has disrupted the Atlantic hurricane season and has had significant consequences in recent months for several African countries.
Countries that should be receiving more rain are receiving less as storms move north. Parts of Nigeria and Cameroon typically get drenched with at least 50 to 75 centimeters of rain from July to September, but have only received 50 to 80% of their typical rainfall since mid-July, according to CPC data.
Further north, typically drier areas, including parts of Niger, Chad, Sudan, Libya and southern Egypt, have received more than 400% of their typical rainfall since mid-July, according to CPC data.
Take the northern portion of Chad, which is part of the Sahara Desert. Up to 2.5 centimeters of rain typically falls here from mid-July to early September. But between 3 and 8 inches of rain has fallen in the same time period this year, according to CPC data.
These excessive rains caused devastating flooding in Chad. Nearly 1.5 million people have been affected and at least 340 have died from floods in the country this summer, according to a United Nations report.
Horrific flooding has also killed more than 220 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in Nigeria, mostly in the typically drier northern portion of the country, CNN previously reported.
Deadly floods also hit Sudan in late August, killing at least 132 people and destroying more than 12,000 homes.
Flood events like these likely bear the fingerprints of climate change, according to Haustein, who works on attribution studies to determine the extent to which climate change has influenced a particular weather event.
As the world warms, it will be able to retain more moisture, Haustein explained. This could lead to wetter monsoons overall and more devastating floods like those this season.
More extensive research will be needed to determine what role climate change played in each flood event, but it could be a sign of things to come, Haustein said.
“Every single event is affected by climate change,” Haustein said. “(Even if) no individual flood is (directly) caused by climate change, it has become more likely.”
