In the early 1900s, France was considering digging a canal from the mediterranian in order to flood the saharan basin and reinvigirate the dried out lakes that exists in it. What do you think about this idea internationally speaking?
In the early 1900s...
The Soviets loved doing these kinds of gigaprojects and it always ended with them ruining the environment. Guess what, long term climate modeling is really fucking hard.
Problem is the Mediterranean is a body of salt water so if you did that you would fill them with water that's useless for drinking or irrigation. The most you'd end up with is an inland salt water sea like the Caspian. You could sail on it or fish in it but that's about it.
France was considering digging a canal from the mediterranian in order to flood the saharan basin and reinvigirate the dried out lakes that exists in it.
did that really happen
The idea was the body of water would be so grand that it would create it's own rainfall that would in turn increase exponentially with every season. I can't remember exactly which basin it was that they wanted to flood, but that the end product would hopefully look something like the OP. It would be a kickstart of the system
It will eventually be like that anyways within a few thousands years. Probably not good to gamble that everything will go well doing something extreme like that
Someone even sugested nuking a path for the water later on
Ah, yes, the famous rains of Central Asia due to the Aral Sea…
fr.wikipedia.org
there's even a book about it :
fr.wikipedia.org
Also as I already mentioned the Caspian Sea is an inland body of water and it's a salt lake.
Why is this thread always so popular on Anon Babble?
1. It would kill the Amazon and Med that depend on the dust blow-off
2. Frenchmen
3. Sand isn't like your girlfriend, it doesn't magically change status when it gets wet
The water would evaporate from the initial inlet and create rain, the rainclouds would actually revert the land by cooling it and allowing retention of moisture. The Sahara has oscillated between green and turning barren based on small tweaks.
And the surrounding area is either a steppe or a fucking desert with only good for grazing spare that Southern bit that gets rain only because it’s enclosed by mountains.
did the amazon already exist during the last green sahara period?
doesn't the caspian make northern iran pretty moist ? the central asian caspian shore is completely flat so there's no rain shadow
it's most saline in the south with the north around the Volga inlet having a much lower salt content
We should turn the north american great lakes into salt water just for the lolz.
No, it’s not the Caspian. It’s the mountains to the South. Just look at the “fertile” neighboring Turkmenistan for a counterexample.
it doesn't magically change status when it gets wet
it does actually, just build some dams and irrigation works
mountains don't create moisture, they only increase precipitation from existing moisture, but moisture still has to come from somewhere
Would this solve supposed sea level rises by dumping water in more desired places?
Also I think internationally speaking this would be horrible as it would create more negros. However the French would see this as a French win.
The Caspian Sea does evaporate and create humidity and rainfall, it's literally fed by rivers. They problem is that wind takes away the evaporation.
In fact on a small level the process already exists:
en.wikipedia.org
Mountains are a necessary component for consistent precipitation. The Sahara proper lacks any mountain ranges. It’s ironically why Morocco and Tunis are more fertile due to the Atlas mountains and whatever mountain range Tunis has.
Mountains are a necessary component for consistent precipitation
this is the rain shadow effect i mentioned
The Sahara proper lacks any mountain ranges
Yes but it now depends on dust for fertiliser - specifically phosphorous:
science.nasa.gov
The Mediterranean Sea also depends on iron influx to support its ecosystem.
Not without roots and thousands if not millions of years to cultivate soil.
You can clearly see it’s like a pimple that doesn’t form any sort of barrier. The winds can just go around it. Compare it to the robust mountain chains surrounding Tabarestan.
thousands if not millions of years to cultivate soil.
youtube.com
youtube.com
Thank god they didn't otherwise subsaharan population wouldve bloomed into the trillions
the Hoggar mountains are actually way higher than the Aures mountains, but they can't generate much rain because no nearby body of water
Altering the existing environment, you mean.
oh we changed something fundamental and now the existing lifeforms in the area were variously affected by it who could have guessed
thus oh no "the environment" is gone forever it is now the surface of the moon because we filled dry lakes back up
I don’t mean altitude, my fren. I mean the extent. That mountain range in Eastern Australia is puny in terms of altitude but it makes a massive difference between the coast and the outback because it stretches for hundreds of kilometers.
explain mount Marsabit
Idk what that one is. What about it?
The Hoggar mountains are massive in scope and larger than many ranges that see rainfall, that's not the issue.
The Frenchman is right, Mountains can help by pushing up moist air to cool it and cause rain to fall, but they don't magically manifest said moist air, there's arid mountains and rainy plains, it's not just about mountains.
It’s a circle, my dude. Not an arc, but a circle. That’s all I’m trying to say.
it's a singular mountain, not extensive at all, yet it creates plenty of rainfail because of the moisture coming from the indian ocean
this is why the french are based. they should do it anyway
Interesting. You could be right, but it’s clearly a very local effect. Look at Morocco in . It spreads way beyond.
The idea is pretty dumb because it floods a lot of agriculturally useful land (some of the best date producing areas in the world) and freshwater aquifers to create some meme salt lake that isn't at all guaranteed to make the area green.
It's also expensive due to the topography.
The Frenchman
rani merroki
It looks wide enough to me to trap moist water that would pass through it across a 1000 kilometer range. It's not like those clouds would be passing through it and then side step it by moving 100s of kilometers in either direction because it's not "arc-y" enough, this isn't like you're blowing air directly at shape and assessing its aerodynamics.
There just isn't any moist air passing through.
Even if it was just a big salt water lake, isn't that still better than a desert with nothing?
this isn't like you're blowing air directly at shape and assessing its aerodynamics
It quite literally is. Physics doesn’t care.
sme7li makansh 9esdi nsebbek
some of the best date producing areas in the world
dates are arab ppl food
Air moves in 3D, it'd just try to get over the mountains and rain down if it had moisture, it's not gonna moonwalk around for long distances just because mountain range shape doesn't fit some arbitrary criteria.
Arab or not they generate good $$$.
The troposphere is around 10km, which is negligible compared to the horizontal length scales, my man. It can be safely approximated as a 2D aerodynamics model, albeit on a curved manifold.
And so air would travel 200 km in a given cardinal direction before traveling 1-2 kilometers up?
It's like blowing air at the middle of a long and narrow stick and expecting it to flow primarily around the ends of the stick instead of just flowing around the circumference.
I'd say 2 orders of magnitude is a pretty good point at which you can make these simplifying assumptions. It's standard practice in physics desu.
The problem is that the Sahara has had a permanent entrenched high pressure system over it for at least 7,000 years so no rain can enter.
... so we should TAKE that high pressure system and PUSH it somewhere else
Thanks, Patrick.