The desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea would have a number of knock-on effects for the climate of the surrounding lands as well as creating a unique environment in the basin itself.
The climate of the basin can only be speculated for no equivalent environment exists on Earth today. But it is likely that as the depth of the basins increased so did the temperatures, possibly reaching summer midday highs of as much as 80C at its deepest points. This would not allow the existence of permanent life and it is likely that temperatures were nowhere near this extreme. But they would have been elevated enough to make life there extremely uncomfortable and difficult.
The surrounding areas would also experience climatic changes. Currently evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea provides moisture to the atmosphere which drives rainfall across much of the surrounding areas. With the Sea drying up there would be no input of moisture to the atmosphere and these rains would fail, resulting in a significantly drier climate over most of the central and eastern mediterranean belt.
In fact, the Mediterranean climate that we associate with Greece, Italy and the Levant would exist only in the Iberian Peninsula and NW Africa.
The desiccation would result in the extinction of much of the marine flora and fauna native to the basins, but the fusing of the two land masses would allow dispersal of terrestrial animals across the region.
Inez’s people survive by fishing for shrimp in the brine pools. In truth such a hypersaline environment would be hostile to life, but life is adaptable and my poor basin dwelling people have to eat something. Hence the shrimp. But apart from that I’ve tried to keep the environment in which they live as plausible as possible.
So how did this scenario arise in the world I have created? That will be the subject of a future post on this blog.
The Arid Lands is available from Amazon in both kindle and print format.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please share you thoughts, I'd love to hear from you....