Jakarta –
More than 6 million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea was a barren salt flat. Is it possible that deserts on Earth will also change with global warming and climate change?
Today, the Mediterranean is renowned for its balmy temperatures and beautiful coastlines that are a delight for beachgoers. However, about 6 million years ago, this swathe of the planet was mostly just dry salt-coated depressions.
If you happen to be in the region right now, it’s theoretically possible to go south of Europe straight to North Africa going across this huge salty desert field.
This unusual situation arose about 6 million years ago when the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic Ocean. It’s not entirely clear how or why this happened, but most explanations involve gigantic tectonic forces and lowering sea levels.
Quoted from IFL Science, before the crisis, sea levels had fallen by about 70 meters making it difficult for the Atlantic Ocean to flow into the Mediterranean. Linked to this, some scholars argue that tectonic forces were at play around the Strait of Gibraltar, effectively lifting the seafloor and creating a dam wall between Southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa.
Centuries passed, evaporation outweighed rainfall and the Mediterranean dried up. Scientists call it the Messinian salinity crisis.
Scientists believe the situation was resolved by the Zanclean flood, a flood theory theory that reconnected the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean some 5.33 million years ago. Thanks to this new influx of water, the Mediterranean is finally turning from a sandy desert into a beautiful ecosystem that is beaming with biodiversity.
Back in the 19th century, ambitious thinkers had dreamed of whether it would be possible to create this kind of event in the Sahara, i.e. create a ‘Sea of the Sahara’ that would transform the region from a barren desert into fertile land. Supporters of this theory argue that the idea could bring many economic and humanitarian benefits, not to mention military ones.
One of the first to develop the plan was the Scottish engineer Donald McKenzie who proposed flooding the El Djouf basin in 1877. He argued that a 644-kilometer channel from Morocco to the Sahara basin could create an inland sea of about 155,400 square kilometers, about the size of Ireland.
Similar proposals appeared in the following decades and the idea of an ‘Sea of the Sahara’ was even the setting for the 1905 novel ‘Invasion of the Sea’ written by the father of science fiction Jules Verne.
The idea continued to spark imaginations throughout the 20th century. Egypt continues to tease plans to build a canal from the Mediterranean Sea leading to the Qattara Depression to create an artificial lake in the middle of the sand dunes. The theory is, it will change the landscape while generating a lot of hydroelectric power from the steady flow of water.
Now, in the era of climate change, some are toying with the ‘moonshot’ idea of ocean flooding again. One such proposal posits the idea of flooding the Middle East Dead Sea, which is found on the borders of Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel. This can be done by passively funneling water from the Mediterranean or Red Sea into the Dead Sea Depression.
Its proponents argue that this will transform the Dead Sea depression into a thriving ecosystem, much like how the Zanclean flood transformed the Mediterranean Sea. In turn, that will promote the growth of forests, microalgae and other plant life that will help capture carbon and mitigate climate change.
But some experts say any geoengineering project at this scale has the potential to go horribly wrong. Scientists overall are highly skeptical about the potential of geoengineering to tackle climate change, let alone the many unforeseen risks it might pose.
Even Y Combinator, the US startup accelerator that showed interest in the idea of creating a ‘desert flood’, has acknowledged that it is risky, unproven, even unlikely to work.
Watch Video “Elementary School Students in Luwu Take Exams when the School is Flooded“
(rns/rns)
2023-05-14 05:06:11
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