A drought so severe, it drained Lake Victoria

A megadrought expansive that parched ancient Africa and South Asia about 16,000 years ago it was one of the most intense and deep dry periods in the history of modern man, indicates a new climate research.

The drought has hit almost all of South Asia and most of the African continent. During drought, Lake Victoria Lake tropical Africa — the world's largest and the source of the Nile — dried out, as did the Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Van in Turkey. And monsoon from China to the Mediterranean resulted in little or no rain.

Looking to climatic recordings, including examples of ancient sediments collected from Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, researchers have combined the timing of peak megadrought over 3000 years when iceberg and meltwater increased northern Atlantic. This change in the ocean, which occurred as the last ice age came to a close, seems to have had effects in the tropics, write the researchers in the journal Science on February 25.

The exact cause of megadrought toughest in at least the past 50,000 years, however, remains unclear.

Research points to a shift towards South the Intertropical Convergence zone, where winds near the equator, creating a tropical rain belt. Moving South would have starved region of rainfall which would otherwise have experienced. However, evidence collected in this study suggest that such a move could not explain the expanse of the drought, according to the authors, who were led by Curt Stager Paul Smith College in New York and the University of Maine, Orono.

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They suggest, that besides the convergence zone-move, tropical rain in Africa and Asia must have weakened dramatically, perhaps in response to the cooling of the surface of the sea and they evaporate less water out of it.

The next question, of course, is if an extreme megadrought could strike again in our world of heating.

"There's a lot less ice on the left to collapse in North Atlantic now, so I wouldn't be surprised if it could all happen again – at least on such a massive scale," Stager said in a statement.

You can follow Parry Wynne LiveSciencewriter on Twitter @ Wynne_Parry.

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