Storm Daniel leaves desert lakes visible from space

   MADRID, 13 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The powerful storm Daniel, which has caused at least 5,200 deaths and 8,000 missing in northeastern Libya, has left lakes further south in the desert, so large that they are visible from space.

Flooded areas in the eastern Libyan desert have been captured in images compared by the Sentinel 2 satellite of the European Copernicus program, taken on September 2 and 12.

The first shows the desert territory south of Cyrenaica completely covered by sand. Ten days later, wide flooded channels appear that run through the desert towards the south, creating in some cases large lakes of intense blue color. Akgunso exceeds ten kilometers in length.

In the eastern Libyan desert, rainfall averages less than 50 millimeters per year in some cases.

Storm Daniel is a long-lived Mediterranean cyclone that has been active for more than a week since it formed as a low pressure weather system around September 4.

"Events like Storm Daniel are relatively rare and tend to occur more frequently in the western part of the Mediterranean Sea than on the arid Libyan coast. It is more difficult to understand the potential for catastrophic extreme events in an arid climate, where rainfall is scarce. and spaced, making designing and building resilient infrastructure challenging," University of Reading Climate Risk and Resilience Professor Liz Stephens said in a statement.