NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - The Sahara in the Holocene

The Earth's climatic future lies in (or in between) two contrasting patterns: the continuation of the slow natural processes recorded during the past several million years or the effects of a more recent manmade scenario related to the greenhouse temperature increase, resulting from atmospheric pollution.
In the first case, excluding man's influence, we have a paleoanalogue that could anticipate global changes and the evolution of the north of Africa in the next milleniums. In the second and more probable case, no paleoanalogue exists, because the changes will occur much faster and to a higher level than in any of the past warm temperature phase. Models vary in the estimation of the future greenhouse climate, and the examples of the last glacial-interglacial transition and of the last warm climatic optimum still provide the best presently available, concrete image of the possible greenhouse future of the Saharan and Sahelian belts, as well as its probable pace.