Rainfall patterns in the Sahara during the 6,000-year "Green Sahara" period have been pinpointed by analyzing marine sediments, according to new research led by a UA geoscientist.
What is now the Sahara Desert was the home to hunter-gatherers who made their living off the animals and plants that lived in the region's savannahs and wooded grasslands 5,000 to 11,000 years ago.
Rainfall patterns in the Sahara during the 6,000-year "Green Sahara" period have been pinpointed by analyzing marine sediments, according to new research led by a UA geoscientist.
What is now the Sahara Desert was the home to hunter-gatherers who made their living off the animals and plants that lived in the region's savannahs and wooded grasslands 5,000 to 11,000 years ago.
"It was 10 times as wet as today," said lead author Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona. Annual rainfall in the Sahara now ranges from about 4 inches to less than 1 inch (100 to 35 mm).
Although other research had already identified the existence of the Green Sahara period, Tierney and her colleagues are the first to compile a continuous record of the region's rainfall going 25,000 years into the past.
The team's paper, "Rainfall regimes of the Green Sahara," was scheduled for publication in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday.
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Photo: A researcher stares up at the 20-foot-long coring device that will be lowered over the side of the R/V Oceanus. The resulting core of marine sediments from off the West African coast will contain sediments laid down over about 40,000 years.
Photo Credit: Peter deMenocal
