/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.15191989]

If we terraformed the Sahara, what sort of global weather changes would it cause?

[Anonymous No.15192008]

>>15191989
Less global fertilisation from dust. More moisture stored in the equator, leading to less rain in lower lattitudes.

[Anonymous No.15192014]

if there wasn't a thousand miles of barren inhospitable land separating black africa from the mediterranean coast then eternal darkness would fall on europe. its bad enough as it is now

[Anonymous No.15192020]

>>15191989
Sahara is already terraformed

[Anonymous No.15192534]

>>15192008
>Less global fertilisation from dust
Fertilization comes from animal manure and the carbon-nitrogen cycle. Where the carbon-nitrogen cycle is interrupted such as in modern agriculture, fertilization comes from a variety of industrial fertilizers. It does not come from desert dust.

[Anonymous No.15192539]

>>15192534
dust blows from the Sahara to the western hemisphere making the Amazon and US prairie very fertile

[Anonymous No.15192554]

>>15192539
This is false.
>the Amazon
The Amazon is fertile because of millions of years of the local carbon/nitrogen cycle in the region.
>US prairie
The US praerie is not fertile. It hasn't been for at least a century as its fertility has been depleted. Most of it is dead dirt that things only grow in because people have been pumping fertilizer into the area. What made it fertile historically is the millions of bison and other animals like boars wandering it in herds shitting all over the place and the biological functions of the grass and brush as part of the natural carbon/nitrogen cycle.

Anything about some falsehood like some trace amount of dust making it across the ocean to making a region fertile is utter nonsense.

[Anonymous No.15192557]

>>15192554
>The US praerie is not fertile.
Not anymore, but it used to be, thanks in part to dust from the Sahara. The dust isn't the only thing that makes it fertile, but the Sahara provides certain minerals, mainly phosphorus.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants

[Anonymous No.15192572]

>>15191989
Anon ...... we already terraformed the Sahara.

It was once lush and green biome, that was destroyed by overgrazing. With no plant life there was less moisture in the air, which triggered the process of desertification, till it is what it is today. You want to reverse the process? Start with someplace like west cost USA. It's a literal desert that they terraformed, but forgot to create a stable ecosystem of plants and instead just grew almonds.

You can't force people to stop destroying good things when it's to their personal benefit. It's their nature, like the scorpion in that fable. Just look at the amazon. It's a fucking RAIN forest, and in 200~ish years it'll be a desert.

[Anonymous No.15192576]

>>15192572
The Sahara was intentionally desertified to stop more violent hominid species from coming from central Africa.

[Anonymous No.15192589]

>>15192576
your brain is desertified

[Anonymous No.15192604]

>>15192554
Saharan dust has phosphate so your argument about nitrogen is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.15192606]

>>15192572
This is BS.

[Anonymous No.15192615]

>>15192572
False, it goes in cycles of greening and desertification, records show it has switched hundreds of times. It simply has no rain, grazing doesnt reduce rainfall.
>muh rich soil
Holding on to water from the rain season doesnt count when theres no rain season
>evaporation goes back as rain
The weather system is global, rain isnt caused by local evaporation, 99% of water for rain comes from the ocean (global, not just the nearby sea).

[Anonymous No.15192638]

>>15192615
>rain isnt caused by local evaporation
Some of it is.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2608/new-study-shows-the-amazon-makes-its-own-rainy-season/

[Anonymous No.15192684]

>>15192638
Its bullshit. Of course 0.1% of water that evaporates is going to fall back as rain within a 1000 mile radius, but its still 99.9% driven by the global ocean.
You can deforest all of the amazon and it will still be just as rainy, even if the rain falls on bare rock. A green sahara would die out without artificial irrigation.

[Anonymous No.15192686]

>>15192684
>You can deforest all of the amazon and it will still be just as rainy
No you can not. The overwhelming amount of evidence in the past 20 years suggests rain is massively tied to the presence of the rainforest. In deforested areas there's been a 50% drop in rain, and if the entire Amazon were gone, then the area would become a hot Savannah type environment, not dissimilar to sub saharan africa.

[Anonymous No.15192705]

>>15192684
>That seasonality has been changing in recent decades, however. The rainy season in the southern Amazon now starts almost a month later than it did in the 1970s. There's evidence that if the Amazon dry season becomes longer than five to seven months, the forest will no longer receive enough rain each year to keep trees alive, and the region will transition from forest to grassy plains.

Are they making this up?

[Anonymous No.15192716]

>>15192705
Of course they are. It's climate soience, nothing they say is true.

[Anonymous No.15192724]

>>15192557
>Not anymore, but it used to be, thanks in part to dust from the Sahara
right and sahara dust stopped falling on it why?
>nasa.gov
thanks for linking us to politically motivated lies from a government agency, but this is /sci/, not /pol/

[Anonymous No.15192728]

>>15192686
>In deforested areas there's been a 50% drop in rain,
Fake
>>15192686
>and if the entire Amazon were gone,
Unscientific speculation you cant prove

[Anonymous No.15192733]

>>15192724
>right and sahara dust stopped falling on it why?
Its still falling its just much less than what is removed by agriculture

[Anonymous No.15192736]

>>15192724
Sahara dust still falls on it and contributes to its fertility. Tilling the shit out of it has reduced its fertility. Both are true.

[Anonymous No.15192747]

The amazon gets a lot more rain than whatever evaporates from it. The excess water is just dumped into the ocean, its retarded to say that all this water is just going on an eternal local loop

[Anonymous No.15192796]

>>15192747
It's not ALL of the water, but a significant amount of it. Enough to keep it a rainforest instead of grassland.

[Anonymous No.15192838]

>>15192572
>that was destroyed by overgrazing
Don't forget deforestation. This led to the loss of the topsoil.

[Anonymous No.15192842]

>>15192615
>The weather system is global, rain isnt caused by local evaporation, 99% of water for rain comes from the ocean (global, not just the nearby sea).
This is wrong, climate is more local than it is global.

[Anonymous No.15192850]

>>15192684
You're wrong, you don't seem to understand how steep the atmosphere's density gradient is. Trees affect the wind breaking, affects the upper flow shear, affects the climate locally and globally.

[Anonymous No.15192854]

>>15192539
>dust blows from the Sahara to the western hemisphere making the Amazon and US prairie very fertile
dust from the sahara has been shown to transport large quantities of phosphorus, it does have a fertilizing effect wherever it blows to, but it's not really make it or break it, many other forests don't have that and still prosper, like indonesia and congo

[Anonymous No.15192856]

>>15192572
No, a slight change in the Earth's tilt did in the Sahara.

[Anonymous No.15192895]

>>15192838
It's said that Australia used to be more like a savanna with some interspersed forests, but the original aborigines would "hunt" by burning down an entire forest and then going in an eating the burnt up animals eventually turning the place into a desert. I'm skeptical of this, but I'm sure if they did that it helped the desertification a lot. I wonder if a similar thing happened in the Sahara.

[Anonymous No.15192978]

>>15192895
Same thing happened in MENA, yes. The region used to be much more fertile, not just near rivers and coastal areas.

[Anonymous No.15192996]

>>15192008
>More moisture stored in the equator,
Per definition, sure
>leading to less rain in lower lattitudes.
How does that follow?

[Anonymous No.15193102]

>>15191989
Depends on how it's terraformed, like how much water are you diverting from major rivers.

[Anonymous No.15193124]

>>15192895
the indians in western north america used to do the same thing, makes you wonder how much of the world's "natural" grasslands that the environmentalists are so dead set on preserving are the artificial product of primitive hunting methods. how long ago did human activity stop qualifying as a force of nature?

[Anonymous No.15193128]

>>15192539
The Amazon, yes. North American prairies? Extreme doubt that it is a significant amount.

[Anonymous No.15193136]

>>15191989
>If we terraformed the Sahara, what sort of global weather changes would it cause?
Impossible to do, so nobody can say, since nobody can predict something as complicated as that.
Scientists cannot even get the weather forecast right more than 49% of the time.
You have better odds of winning big in Vegas than answering this question.

[Anonymous No.15193144]

>>15193128
Much less, but it does.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=saharan+dust+storm+map&form=HDRSC2&first=1

[Anonymous No.15193274]

>>15192895
>I'm skeptical of this
It's half true, half exaggerated for political reasons.
The aboriginals use of fire stick farming did contribute to deforestation, but this isn't unique to Australia. It also happened in the Americas, Asia, the Near East, and Europe. It was fine for small bands but larger societies permanently altered the landscape with it before transitioning to more productive farming techniques. Bronze Age Britain was even less forested than the UK today in part because of this.
Australian deserts also formed due to topography. The driest deserts on earth tend to form at 30 degrees north or south of the equator, which is where most of Australia is, but note Tasmania at 40 degrees south is much more temperate and forested. Combined with having a large inland space (Australia is roughly square) with much less mountains than say, the USA - and the fact that Indonesia gets much of the precipitation that might other fall - its really not surprising so much of Australia is desert. Although IIRC there actually is more savannah and dry grassland than desert proper, that will probably change.
Wish I didn't live here.

[Anonymous No.15193284]

>>15192895
Also they didn't exactly just eat burnt animals. It chased animals out so they could hunt them and made new shoots which game prefer eating.

[Anonymous No.15193350]

>>15192615
>>15192684
>>15192705
Retards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisture_recycling

>The recycling ratio is a diagnostic measure of the potential for interactions between land surface hydrology and regional climate.[2][3][4][5] Land use changes, such as deforestation or agricultural intensification, have the potential to change the amount of precipitation that falls in a region. The recycling ratio for the entire world is one, and for a single point is zero. Estimates for the recycling ratio for the Amazon basin range from 24% to 56%

[Anonymous No.15193365]

>>15191989
>Doesn't know what terraformed means

[Anonymous No.15193376]

>>15193350
>wikipedia

[Anonymous No.15193382]

>>15193376
>imagine being this retarded
What is your counterargument for the existence of moisture recycling?

[Anonymous No.15193388]

>>15193382
Reading actual studies instead of nonsense articles written by dimwits who think that speaking with a silly accent is the Scottish Language.

[Anonymous No.15193393]

>>15193388
So you have none. Thanks, retard. It's been a very engaging discussion.

[Anonymous No.15193504]

>>15192572
>destroyed by overgrazing
nope, like >>15192856 said, Milankovitch cycles
Weird thing is, Sahara will get green again when it gets *hotter*.
For some reason the monsoons get bigger when Sahara gets hotter, and it is enough to overcome the loss that even the extra heat causes.
https://youtu.be/ZQP-7BPvvq0

[Anonymous No.15193689]

>>15192572
Based knower

[Anonymous No.15193780]

>>15193128
>believing this stupid meme
The tropic of cancer has some of the dryest (MENA) and lushest regions on the planet (India, Bangladesh and China).

It's propoganda to excuse the peoples who destroyed and deforested their local climates.

[Anonymous No.15193783]

>>15193274
>It's half true,
Your post proceeds to say it is fully true.
>half exaggerated for political reasons.
It's fully repressed for political reasons. Something much harder to hide is how the Moai also completely deforested their island. Short term destructive thinking like this was the death of many civilizations throughout history, but the noble savage myth must be maintained for political reasons.

[Anonymous No.15193890]

>>15193780
Theres no law of nature that says that every place has to have a lush forest. What you are doing is spreading hate speech under the guise of science.
Want me to tell you of a very deforested yet rainy place? England. According to your discredited model England ought to be some cold desert like Gobi.

[Anonymous No.15194015]

>>15193350
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisture_recycling
Did you read it? It does not rely on primary sources but an overview from 2006. To find primary references, you have to go to Waybackmachine, and you will find the references are from the 1970s. Do you think the science was settled 50 years ago?

Also, why do people on /sci/ take the knee before Wikipedia?? Digging into the sources show a lot of murky stuff, especially when "sources" are newspaper articles, some of which are behind paywalls.

[Anonymous No.15194259]

>>15194015
Then it should be trivial for you to link a source that studies moisture recycling and finds a contradictory conclusion. The hydrologic cycle has been studied for literal millennia.

[Anonymous No.15194263]

>>15191989
None

[Anonymous No.15194662]

>>15194259
I can tell you have no practical experience in editing Wikipedia. I used to be a contributor but left when the politics and the low end autism got completely out of control. Defective people guard theur articles and insta-reverts anything you add, no matter how many sources you provide. Unless you have time for 24/7 activity on WIkipedia, you have no chance.

So I left Wikipedia forever, and now I am instead a Installgentoo WIki contributor. It is far more comfy.

[Anonymous No.15195271]

>>15194662
>Still no contradicting evidence
You understand that your ignorance and personal biases are not evidence that something is false, don't you?

[Anonymous No.15195412]

>>15195271
I need just one single observation of poor citation practice to determine that poor citation practice does occur. I never estimated the rate of it.
Look, just because you once caught a late night episode of Star Trek, you are still not a real scientist.

[Anonymous No.15197440]

>>15192684
Transpiration???

[Anonymous No.15197552]

>>15197440
water evaporates ok? Yes, trees release a bunch of moisture, its just water being lost to the atmosphere.
Winds will carry moisture far away. Even if some tiny fraction is recovered it doesnt change the overall dynamic.
For instance, if a place requires 300 mm of rain to keep a forest and 10% of that water is locally recycled, then such a place might survive with only 270 mm of rain, the difference being made up with some recycling.
In the sahara the precipitation is on average 76 mm a year. That is pitiful, its a quarter of what would be required to develop native forests. Some minute water recycling isnt going to increase the water supply 4X.

[Anonymous No.15197815]

>>15197552
The rising air brings in more wet air from the ocean.

[Anonymous No.15197833]

>>15191989
stfu globohomo, who tf is gonna terraform a desert? the inbred saudi desert niggers?

[Anonymous No.15199506]

>>15193890
England was a lush forest when the romans went there

[Anonymous No.15199782]

>>15197815
>The rising air brings in more wet air from the ocean.
We are talking about recycling of moisture over land, cretin

[Anonymous No.15199785]

>>15199506
And it isnt now, its deforested yet it still has plenty of rain. Because forests dont cause rain.

[Anonymous No.15200709]

The weather will get wetter than your mammas pussy and the earth will overall get warmer

[Anonymous No.15200725]

>>15192576
Based Hakan Rotmwrt reference
>captcha: RH4KK

[Anonymous No.15200785]

bump

[Anonymous No.15200933]

>>15191989
Millions, perhaps billions daying. Would be fun.

[Anonymous No.15200940]

a bunch of stupid faggots and their cringey "i'm gonna save the world from global warming, then ppl will finally give me the respect i deserve" fantasy live