Global warming means longer, more severe drought for West Africa

As the earth warms up, the effects of global warming in West Africa will mean that the droughts that the people already experience will only get longer and more severe.

In the late 20th century, about 100,000 people died in the Sahel drought that lasted for decades. Scientists looked at the lake sediments in Ghana and determined that dry periods have occurred already, and some droughts in the past have lasted for a century.

As the climate changes however, the droughts will only get worse and there could be another one soon like the Sahel drought.

Scientists are just amazed that the droughts last as long as they do.
The sediments that they looked at were from Lake Bosumtwi and spanned the last 3,000 years.
As the temperature increases however, the normal climate patters become more extreme, meaning the droughts become more severe.

In the region, in the last 2,700 years, there have been six huge century long droughts and two huge ones in the last 1,000 years. When the scientists were testing the sediment, they found remains of a forest that had grown only a couple of hundred years ago, when Lake Bosumtwi was much lower.