Skip to main content

Lake Chad - physical conditions

In last week post I wrote about changing conditions of the Tanganyika Lake. Today, I would like to take a look at the Lake Chad. The Lake is located in between Cameroon, Nigeria, the RCA, Sudan and Chad (Ngatcha et al., 2005), so it’s in the Sahel/Sahara zone of central north Africa (13°N, 14°E) (Sylvestre et al., 2018).
                                                           The Lake Chad (source)

 The lake covers nowadays almost 8% of the continent. This is not as large as the Tanganyika Lake, however with the size 2,5 x 106 km2 the Lake Chad is one of the biggest Lakes of the world (ibid.). The climate zone has a great influence on the amount of water that is naturally "due" to the lake. In case of the Lake Chad it’s the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), which oscillates seasonally between about 150 N and 150S, combined with the northern African monsoon system. This leads to a short rainy season from June to October, the rest of the year is dry (ibid.). The southern part of the lake is semiarid and the north is arid (FAO 2018).

“From the 1960s to the 1980s, the area of Lake Chad shrank from 22 000 km2 to about 300 km2” (Gao et al., p. 1, 2011). To explain, find the reasons of this phenomenon, is not that simple. There are theories which explain the decrease by persistent droughts and increased irrigation withdrawals. This theory will be valid in many respects. Nevertheless, this explanation is not quite sufficient. The northern part is completely dried up and the reasons mentioned above are not enough for this event (Gao etal., 2011), as you can see in the image underneath.
 
2010 Lake Chad's basins source




Main water sources are the water inflow through the Chari and Logone rivers (FAO 2018).It’s said that there has been a general decline in rainfalls, and degradation of the vegetation cover in the last four decades. The annual rainfall is nowadays on entire basin 320 mm varying between to less than 100 mm in the northern parts and 1500 mm in the southern parts of the region of Chad. I read that the Sahel zone has experienced the most substantial and sustained decline in rainfall recorded anywhere in the world in the past 30 years (FAO 2018).

 There is much to suggest that global climate change is the reason for the changing conditions, as rising temperatures and a decline in precipitation can be observed worldwide, for example at Lake Tanganyika. I would like to see in the next weeks what kind of effects can be observed, based on the changing physical conditions at Lake Chad.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The socio-economic impacts

In the first blog posts, I looked at some of the changing conditions of Lake Tanganyika and the resulting environmental and social-economic problems. Today I want to look at the Lake Chad and its changing environmental conditions (as I explained last week) and their negative discourse. It is written in the media that Africa is bearing the brunt of aridification as a result of climate change. But on the contrary, the “West” is producing the most significant quantities of greenhouse gases ( Murray, 2007 ) It's quite obvious that fishing conditions change due to the sinking of the lake but I wanted to see how they look like.  I’ve watched a reportage about the consequences of a fisherman’s daily life due to the sinking water. It’s a film by the United Nations and it shows fishermen who noticed changes in the lake. The water level has fallen radically. There are 20 million people in the area who are seeing their way of life endangered. Furthermore, it’s said in the film th...
2 comments
Read more

The changing conditions

Over the 20 th century the environmental change had a massive impact on the Lake Tanganyika. Today I would like to focus on the elevation of the density stratification and stability. The warming influences the physical conditions of the lake and therefore the productivity of the lake ( Verburg& Hecky, 2009 ). But first, it can be said that climate warming effects can have sizeable repercussions for tropical lakes like the Tanganyika lake. In my last blog entry, I have mentioned the economic dependence in which the neighbouring countries find themselves. That’s why the knowing about the consequences of climate change is in this region so important. So the local people, the states and other involves parties can get prepared for the changing and challenging situation ahead. To come back to physical conditions, which change during the climate change, it is essential to explain the key point just as “warming surface waters lead to increasing differences in water density that wi...
2 comments
Read more

Introduction

The climate conditions have changed significantly in the last 50-100 years. Global temperatures are rising and so is the number of people who write about them. Now, I would also like to participate in this movement. As a geography student who has been dealing with the topic of climate change for a while, I would now like to deal intensively with a certain topic in the sometimes overstraining topic of climate change. I will deal with a previously unknown area (for me) and record my thoughts here every week. I would be more than happy if you would accompany me on this journey and participate in it. The focus of this blog will be on climate change and water in Africa. Probably these kinds of pictures show up in your head when you think about this topic. source: www.worldvision.de source: www.huffingtonpost.com   soure: waterwellsforafrica.org source: darkroom.baltimoresun.com Is there something wrong about it? I don’t know. I just know that these clichés exist. B...
2 comments
Read more