Germany Rising greenhouse gases have boosted rainfall in the Sahel region of Africa, easing droughts that killed 100,000 people in the 1970s and 1980s, in a rare positive effect of climate change, a study said on Monday.
The report adds to debate about the causes of a greening of the Sahel region, south of the Sahara Desert from Senegal to Sudan. It said a continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions was likely to help more rainfall in the region in future.
"Amounts of rainfall have recovered substantially," said Rowan Sutton, a professor at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at Britain's Reading University and co-author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Sutton cautioned that the change in rainfall was only local and that many parts of Africa face mounting problems from warming, ranging from desertification and floods to rising sea levels.
"It would be naïve to conclude that this is a good thing for Africa," he said. "And in future, there are other effects – the rise in temperatures can be detrimental to crops."
Still, the scientists wrote that models indicated that a projected continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions "is favourable for sustaining, and potentially amplifying, the recovery of Sahel rainfall."
