Before and after satellite images show lakes appearing in Sahara after deluge of rain soaks desert

The ephemeral lake Sebkha el Melah in Algeria, seen on August 12 and September 29. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using US Geological Survey Landsat data)

Lakes have appeared in the Sahara after a cyclone brought a deluge of rain to North Africa that soaked areas of Earth’s largest hot desert, satellite images show.

An extratropical cyclone hit parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya on September 7 and 8, dropping about 8 inches (20 centimeters) on the affected areas, the equivalent of an entire year’s rainfall in few days, according to reports. NASA Earth Observatory.

The deluge and runoff filled multiple ephemeral lakes in the Sahara, including Sebkha el Melah in Algeria and several splashed by the Erg Chebbi, a immense expanse of starry dunes in Morocco NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite also captured several ephemeral lakes appearing in parts of Morocco and Algeria.

The Erg Chebbi lakes were filled after rivers in the nearby Atlas Mountains overflowed near Merzouga, a town near the border with Algeria that serves as a gateway to the Star Dunes. An image captured on October 1 by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites shows new lakes dotted around the edges of Erg Chebbi.

NASA’s Landsat 9 satellite captured the images of the newly filled Sebkha el Melah lake in Algeria. Images captured on August 12 and September 29 and shared by the Earth Observatory show changes in the landscape, with a green lake appearing in the desert.

Images of Erg Chebbi, with the first showing the region in 2021, the second after the deluge, taken on October 1, 2024 (Image credit: Google Earth/European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 images)

The lake covered 74 square miles (191 square kilometers) and was about 7.2 feet (2.2 meters) deep, according to calculations by Moshe Armonfull professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Armon used satellite images to establish the extent of the water combined with a 3D map of the lake, according to the Earth Observatory.

Since 2000, there have been two times that water levels in Sebkha el Melah were higher than they are now. In 2008, the lake filled up after an extra-tropical cyclone brought exceptionally heavy rainfall. It took four years for the lake to dry up completely again.

Images showing Algeria and Morocco on August 14 and October 9 (Image credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC)

The water currently filling Sebkha el Melah will probably remain for some time. “If we don’t have more rain events, a depth of 2.2 meters, like now, would take about a year to completely evaporate,” Armon said in the statement.

Understanding how rain events like September’s cyclone affect the Sahara helps researchers better understand what the desert was like thousands of years ago, when it was green, and how it will change in the future as a result of climate change.

Current projections suggest that parts of the Sahara will receive more rain, but there are large uncertainties. “What will happen in the Sahara is not very clear, but we hope to eventually develop a better understanding of the future of the Sahara by studying these lake-filling events,” Armon said.

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