By Emily J. Beverly
Lake Victoria, in East Africa, is the world’s largest tropical freshwater lake. At 68,800km², it’s also the second largest freshwater lake in the world after Lake Superior in North America. On a clear day you cannot see the other side of Lake Victoria, yet this vast body of water has dried up several times in the past – and it could happen again.
Over the past 100,000 years, the lake has completely dried up at least three times. Each time it was probably replaced by a vast grassland.
My colleagues and I found that the lake could dry up again in as little as 500 years because of changes in temperature, rainfall and orbital forcing – the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Our predictions are based on historical and geologic data from the last 100,000 years. Read more…
