Rain in the Sahara? Researchers predict a wetter future for the desert

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https://phys.org/news/2025-10-sahara-wetter-future.html

by the second half of the 21st century, rising global temperatures could make the Sahara much wetter, according to UIC researchers. By that time, the North African desert could see 75% more precipitation than its historical norm, as reported in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. Under extreme climate conditions, rainfall is expected to increase in southeastern and south-central Africa, too, the researchers said.

"Changing rainfall patterns will affect billions of people, both in and outside Africa," said lead author Thierry Ndetatsin Taguela, a postdoctoral climate researcher in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "We have to start planning to face these changes, from flood management to drought-resistant crops."

Taguela said understanding how rising temperatures affect rainfall can help in the development of adaptation strategies. In the study, he used an ensemble of 40 climate models to simulate summer precipitation in Africa in the second half of the 21st century (2050–2099) compared with the historical period (1965–2014). Taguela analyzed models' outputs under two climate scenarios: one that simulated moderate greenhouse gas emissions and one that simulated very high greenhouse gas emissions.