Erschienen:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Erschienen in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (2021) 23
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.1073/pnas.2024898118
ISSN:
0027-8424;
1091-6490
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Beschreibung:
Significance Explaining the greening of the Sahara during the Holocene has been a challenge for decades. A strengthening of the African monsoon caused by increased summer insolation is usually cited to explain why the Sahara was vegetated from 14,000 to 5,000 y ago. Here, we provide a unique climate record of quantified winter, spring, and summer precipitation in Morocco over the past 18,500 y, and numeric simulations, which show that moisture contributions from the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean in winter, were as important as the expanded summer monsoon for the greening of the Sahara during the African humid period. The findings of this study will help to better understand and simulate climate variability over northern Africa.