# data[].attributes.body
When you are traveling in the desert make sure to pack canned food or try to find food in the desert. (First option much easier)

# data[].attributes.body
Second time riding camel.

# data[].attributes.body
https://padlet.com/348685/Hynes12
Password: Hackz4dayz

# data[].attributes.body
I googled some of my information too. Such as rainfall and climate.

# data[].attributes.body
The saharan desert during the fall is the perfect travel season. It is temperate during the day (65-75 degrees farenheit) and cool during the night (40-45 degrees) A couple million people travel during the fall in the Saharan desert. Rainfall is much like the spring.

# data[].attributes.body
The saharan desert in the spring is much like the summer except it can only get upto about 90 degrees usually. Also, spring is the season of sandstorms as it falls between the cold of winter and the heat of summer. How much rainfall the saharan desert gets in the spring depends where is the sahara you are. In the south it is about 1/2 inch in one storm. In the north it is 1/10 of a inch in one night of light rainfall.  Spring is also the season where many camels produce offspring. (Have babies)

# data[].attributes.body
Orange = sources
Red= summer
Blue = winter
Green = spring/fall
Purple = very important
Black = others

# data[].attributes.body
The saharan desert during the summer is very dry and very hot. It receives very little rain if any. It can soar to 125 degrees farenheit during the day and it is a pleasant night at 55 degrees farenheit on average.

# data[].attributes.body
The sahara desert is usually mild in the winter with daytime tempatures at about 55 degrees and nighttime tempatures are about freezing. Snowfall is very rare during the winter, it usually happens once every 40 years. Here is a picture of the snowfall that happens, when snowfall happens it usually dumps around 12 inches of snow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The great desert was born some 7 million years ago, as remnants of a vast sea called Tethys closed up

smithsonianmag.com

The movement of tectonic plates that created the Mediterranean Sea and the Alps also sparked the drying of the Sahara some 7 million years ago, according to the latest computer simulations of Earth's ancient climate.

Though North Africa is currently covered by the world's largest non-polar desert, climate conditions in the region have not been constant there for the last several million years. Subtle changes in Earth's tilt toward the sun periodically increase the amount of solar energy received by the Northern Hemisphere in summer, altering atmospheric currents and driving monsoon rains. North Africa also sees more precipitation when less of the planet's water is locked up in ice. Such increases in moisture limit how far the Sahara can spread and can even spark times of a " green Sahara ", when the sparse desert is replaced by abundant lakes, plants and animals.

Before the great desert was born, North Africa had a moister, semiarid climate. A few lines of evidence, including ancient dune deposits found in Chad, had hinted that the arid Sahara may have existed at least 7 million years ago. But without a mechanism to explain how it emerged, few scientists thought that the desert we see today could really be that old. Instead, most scientists argue that the Sahara took shape just 2 to 3 million years ago. Terrestrial and marine evidence suggest that North Africa underwent a period of drying at that time, when the Northern Hemisphere started its most recent cycle of glaciation.

Now Zhongshi Zhang of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen, Norway, and colleagues have run simulations of climate change in North Africa over the last 30 million years. Their simulations take into account changes in Earth's orbital position, atmospheric chemistry and the ratio of land to ocean as driven by tectonic forces. The models shows that precipitation in North Africa declined by more than half about 7 million years ago, causing the region to dry out. But this effect could not be explained by changes in vegetation, Earth's tilt or greenhouse gas concentrations-leaving tectonic action.

About 250 million years ago, a huge body of water called the Tethys Sea separated the supercontinents of Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. As those supercontinents broke apart and shuffled around, the African plate collided with the Eurasian plate, birthing the Alps and the Himalayas but closing off the bulk of the Tethys Sea. As the plates kept moving, the sea continued to shrink, eventually diminishing into the Mediterranean.

What set off the aridification in Africa was the replacement of the western arm of the Tethys Sea with the Arabian Peninsula around 7 to 11 million years ago. Replacing water with land, which reflects less sunlight, altered the region's precipitation patterns. This created the desert and heightened its sensitivity to changes in Earth's tilt, the researchers conclude in a study published today in Nature.

The emergence of the Sahara 7 million years ago would have affected the plants and animals in the region-and possibly the early ancestors of human beings. For instance, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which may be the earliest member in the human family tree, lived just to the south of the Sahara (in what is now northern Chad) around the time of the transition. Overall, the team writes, the study adds to evidence that changes in precipitation "were fundamental to the evolution and dispersal of hominins in north Africa."

Like this article?
SIGN UP for our newsletter

About Sarah Zielinski

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Sahara Is Millions of Years Older Than Thought

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
smithsonianmag.com The movement of tectonic plates that created the Mediterranean Sea and the Alps also sparked the drying of the Sahara some 7 million years ago, according to the latest computer simulations of Earth's ancient climate. Though North Africa is currently covered by the world's largest non-polar desert, climate conditions in the region have not been constant there for the last several million years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Sahara Desert is located in the northern portion of Africa and covers over 3,500,000 square miles (9,000,000 sq km) or roughly 10% of the continent. It is bounded in the east by the Red Sea and it stretches west to the Atlantic Ocean. To the north, the Sahara Desert's northern boundary is the Mediterranean Sea, while in the south it ends at the Sahel, an area where the desert landscape transforms into a semi-arid tropical savanna.

Since the Sahara Desert makes up nearly 10% of the African continent, the Sahara is often cited as the world's largest desert. This is not entirely true, however, as it is only the world's largest hot desert. Based on the definition of a desert as an area receiving less than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year, the world's largest desert is actually the continent of Antarctica.

Geography of the Sahara Desert

The Sahara covers parts of several African nations including Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia. Most of the Sahara Desert is undeveloped and features a varied topography. Most of its landscape has been shaped over time by wind and includes sand dunes, sand seas called ergs, barren stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, and salt flats. Around 25% of the desert is sand dunes, some of which reach over 500 ft (152 m) in height.

There are also several mountain ranges within the Sahara and many are volcanic. The highest peak found in these mountains is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano that rises to 11,204 ft (3,415 m). It is a part of the Tibesti Range in northern Chad. The lowest point in the Sahara Desert is in Egypt's Qattara Depression at -436 ft (-133 m) below sea level.

Most of the water found in the Sahara today is in the form of seasonal or intermittent streams. The only permanent river in the desert is the Nile River that flows from Central Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. Other water in the Sahara is found in underground aquifers and in areas where this water reaches the surface, there are oases and sometimes small towns or settlements like the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt and Ghardaïa in Algeria.

Since the amount of water and topography varies based on location, the Sahara Desert is divided into different geographic zones. The center of the desert is considered hyper-arid and has little to no vegetation, while the northern and southern portions have sparse grasslands, desert shrub and sometimes trees in areas with more moisture.

Climate of the Sahara Desert

Although hot and extremely dry today, it is believed that the Sahara Desert has undergone various climatic shifts for the last few hundred thousand years. For example, during the last glaciation, it was bigger than it is today because precipitation in the area was low. But from 8000 BCE to 6000 BCE, precipitation in the desert increased because of the development of low pressure over ice sheets to its north. Once these ice sheets melted, however, the low pressure shifted and the northern Sahara dried out but the south continued to receive moisture due to the presence of a monsoon.

Around 3400 BCE, the monsoon moved south to where it is today and the desert again dried out to the state it is in today. In addition, the presence of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, ITCZ, in the southern Sahara Desert prevents moisture from reaching the area, while storms north of the desert stop before reaching it as well. As a result, the annual rainfall in the Sahara is below 2.5 cm (25 mm) per year.

In addition to being extremely dry, the Sahara is also one of the hottest regions in the world. The average annual temperature for the desert is 86°F (30°C) but during the hottest months temperatures can exceed 122°F (50°C), with the highest temperature ever recorded at 136°F (58°C) in Aziziyah, Libya.

Plants and Animals of the Sahara Desert

Due to the high temperatures and arid conditions of the Sahara Desert, the plant life in the Sahara Desert is sparse and includes only around 500 species. These consist mainly of drought and heat resistant varieties and those adapted to salty conditions (halophytes) where there is sufficient moisture.

The harsh conditions found in the Sahara Desert have also played a role in the presence of animal life in the Sahara Desert. In the central and driest part of the desert, there are around 70 different animal species, 20 of which are large mammals like the spotted hyena. Other mammals include the gerbil, sand fox, and Cape hare. Reptiles like the sand viper and the monitor lizard are present in the Sahara as well.

People of the Sahara Desert

It is believed that people have inhabited the Sahara Desert since 6000 BCE and earlier. Since then, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Europeans have been among the peoples in the area. Today the Sahara's population is around 4 million with the majority of the people living in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara.

Most of the people living in the Sahara today do not live in cities; instead, they are nomads who move from region to region throughout the desert. Because of this, there are many different nationalities and languages in the region but Arabic is most widely spoken. For those who do live in cities or villages on fertile oases, crops and the mining of minerals like iron ore (in Algeria and Mauritania) and copper (in Mauritania) are important industries that have allowed population centers to grow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Learn All About the Sahara, the World's Largest Hot Desert

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Sahara Desert is located in the northern portion of Africa and covers over 3,500,000 square miles (9,000,000 sq km) or roughly 10% of the continent. It is bounded in the east by the Red Sea and it stretches west to the Atlantic Ocean.

# data[].attributes.body
This guy is awesome