A Plan To Green The Sahara Desert

The Sahara desert is expanding, and has been for at least a century. It's a phenomenon that seems impossible to stop.

But it hasn't stopped at least one group of scientists from dreaming of a way to do it. And their proposed solution, a grand scheme that involves covering vast areas of desert with solar panels and windmills, just got published in the prestigious journal Science.

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With drought, green vegetation disappears, and the light-colored dirt that remains reflects more of the sun. This cools the land surface, which in turn means that there's less heat driving air upward into higher and cooler levels of the atmosphere – the process that normally produces precipitation. So there's less rain, killing even more vegetation.

[Eugenia] Kalnay wondered if there might be a way to revive those atmospheric currents. "It occurred to me that the same [cycle] would go in the opposite way, so it would increase precipitation, and vegetation, and then more precipitation," she says.

And then she thought of solar panels. They're dark, so they don't reflect the sun's light. Could they heat up the surface and revive those rain-bringing air currents?

You can read the rest @
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/09/645539064/so-maybe-stopping-the-sahara-from-expanding-isn-t-an-impossible-dream

This is a WONDERFUL idea !!!

Here are some associated thoughts:

(1) The power generated by the solar cells could alleviate the need to burn fossil fuels in Europe and Africa, also helping to control climate change.

(2) A cooler Sahel might reduce the number of tropical waves entering the Atlantic Ocean from that region, leading to fewer hurricanes.

(3) A greener Sahara might support crops which would help feed the starving peoples of the world.

(4) The people most likely to fund such a project are the Chinese, who unlike the US and Europe are out to partner with the Africans, not plunder their wealth.

I would urge that a wider simulation be performed to determine what this plan would do to the climate of the entire earth. Should it prove to be as beneficial as we all suspect, I also would urge that we cut the US "defense" budget to the bone and divert some of the savings to this project ... thereby making the world a better and safer place to live.