The Sahara desert is getting dryer. Droughts and desertification is happening steadily around Lake Chad and it’s been happening for a couple of years.

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Not only is this drought continuing to chug along, it’s proceeding at as full-steam pace as it ever has been.

— Park Williams

The U.S. is also experiencing similar problems. Droughts in the west have been extreme. Park Williams is an associate professor at UCLA. He studies Bioclimatology, Droughts, Climate Changes, Forests, and Fires.

The Sahara desert is losing its water sources due to dryness. It’s growing at 30 miles per year. That’s over a decade of time too. Nigeria loses 80 children a day because of the drought. California is also experiencing a drought. They lost $1.2 billion in agriculture. Dryness is sweeping from the western side of the U.S. over to the Eastern side. Farmers water usage was also limited from conservation policies.

Earth.org said, “Sahara has been growing, covering 10% more land since records began around 1920.”

The change from 1972 to now is crazy. It is a big span of time, but it’s still a big difference. Climate change is real, and it’s happening faster than you’d think.

Tropical latitudes are moving away from the center of the Earth and towards its poles. The desert that is in the latitude, expands with them. The cause of the drought in the west is because the U.S. has gotten so little rain throughout 2019 and 2020. 

People need to start conserving water if they want it to last. Although nothing lasts forever, you can always make it last longer. These dry and hot conditions are projected to last through summer until fall. That’s when the west begins to get wetter. Some scientists project the drought to turn into a megadrought. Rainfall across the southwest United States has been at its driest since 1895.