While global warming is causing panic in the United States, the rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in one of the driest places in the world.

This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.

Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.

The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.

“The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain,” said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

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