Snow falls in the Sahara Desert for the fifth time in 40 years – Burning Issues

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Why snowfall has blanketed sand dunes of Sahara desert

In a ‘rare, but not unheard of’ situation, snow fell in the Saharan town of Ain Sefra in Algeria after temperatures plummeted to -2 degrees Celsius

A photographer has captured mesmerising pictures of snow blanketing sand dunes in the Sahara Desert in Africa where temperatures as high as 58 degrees Celsius have been recorded.
The images show snow and ice near the town of Ain Sefra in northwest Algeria. The area has experienced snow only a handful of times in the past 40 years.

Sahara (from Arabic ṣaḥrāʾ, “desert”) largest desert in the world.
Filling nearly all of northern Africa,
the actual area varies as the desert expands and contracts over time.
The Sahara is bordered in the west by the Atlantic Ocean, in the north by the Atlas Mountains and Mediterranean Sea, in the east by the Red Sea, and in the south by the Sahel—a semiarid region that forms a transitional zone between the Sahara to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south.

Ain Sefra is located in the Atlas Mountains, 1,000 metres above sea level and is known as “the gateway to the desert”.
It lies in the Naama province of Algeria in the northern part of the Sahara, close to the Moroccan border.
The dusting of snow is the fifth time in 42 years that the town has seen snow, with previous occurrences in 1979, 2016, 2018 and 2021.
Ain Sefra sees average high temperatures of around 37 degrees Celsius in summer and has seen record lows of -10.2 degrees Celsius in winter.
Snow is very rare in the desert because there is not usually enough water in the air for it, even though it can get very cold at night.

high-pressure systems of cold air have moved overland to the deserts, causing lower temperatures.
Such anticyclones tend to reach Saudi Arabia by moving clockwise out from Central Asia, picking up moisture en route which cools to form snow.
The quantity of snowfall has varied greatly, ranging from a snowstorm that stopped traffic in 1979 to 40 cm falling in 2018.
“Such situations, including snowfalls in Sahara, a long cold spell in North America, very warm weather in the European part of Russia and sustained rains which sparked flooding in Western European countries, have been occurring more frequently
“The high recurrence of these extreme [weather] conditions stems from global warming.