0000000000049493
AUTHOR
Françoise Gasse
The arid–humid transition in the Sahara and the Sahel during the last deglaciation
At the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa were extremely dry. New records of rainfall show that during the subsequent deglaciation, the transition from arid to humid conditions in these regions occurred synchronously in two main steps. Comparison with other records of palaeoclimate in Europe and the North Atlantic Ocean shows that certain common factors controlled changes in ocean and atmosphere dynamics during the deglaciation.
Palaeoenvironmental changes in the arid and subarid belt (Sahara-Sahel-Arabian peninsula) from 150 kyr to present
The PEP III Arid to Subarid Belt includes the largest hot desert in the world, the Sahara- Arabian desert and the Sahel zone. The region of interest extends south of the Atlas Mountains and south and east of the Mediterranean Sea to approximately 10 °N and shows a broadly zonal pattern with a varying seasonal distribution of precipitation. In the north (ca. 20–23 °N), rainfall results from the southward displacement of the midlatitude westerlies during winter whereas the south is governed by seasonal northward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Contraction and expansion phases of these presently semi-arid to hyper-arid desert areas result from significant changes in loc…