Discover the origin of the ancient lake under the desert

Finding the origin of the Negev submerged lake helps better understand the process of climate change from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The Negev Desert throughout Israel is one of the driest places on Earth, deep within the sandstone under an ancient reservoir of hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The Segev Desert contains an ancient lake of water dating back hundreds of thousands of years.(Photo: North Western).

According to the study, this ancient reservoir is made up of a part of the Nubian sandstone aquifer (NSAS) , located underground in the eastern Sahara desert. A team from Ben - Gurion University looked for the origin and date of this ancient reservoir by implementing a rare radioisotope analysis technique of the Krypton element. This is a rare, volatile gas that comes in close contact with the water surface, which is used to date an ancient underground lake.

The analysis shows that the origin of the reservoir is related to two time periods, from 40,000 years ago and 360,000 years ago. From 40,000 years ago, this ancient reservoir was formed from Mediterranean storms combined with the last Ice Age. During the period from 360,000 years ago, global temperatures were cooler than the current due to tropical winds from the Atlantic Ocean, the reservoir was then accreted and supplied with additional water.

Researchers now believe that although the reservoir is not accreted by monthly rainfall, it is a testament to changes." The ancient reservoir in the desert is a data warehouse of climate change for hundreds of thousands of years , " said physicist Jake Zappala of the National Laboratory.

The finding also shows that the Negev submarine lake is not the same as the Sahara subterranean lake due to the Holocene monsoon winds. It is one of the data that helps assess the past and future climate models.

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