A recent study has revealed that climate change has the potential probability of hydrating the Sahel, one of Africa’s driest regions. The study published on Wednesday suggests that this new state of climate although might make farming and grazing a lot easier by providing more water, but it is not entirely a good news because it will also bring potential risks of floods and storms.

“The sheer size of the change is mindboggling,” said Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) who co-authored the study in the journal Earth System Dynamics. “Once the temperature approaches the threshold, the rainfall regime could shift within just a few years,” he said in a statement.

He and his team predicted Sahel’s future by using computer simulations of the area. They’ve noticed changes in the region’s rainfall patterns due to the 1.5 to 2.0 C rise in temperature above the pre-industrial levels. Which also coincides with the temperature target made in the 2015 Paris Climate Act. “Although this tipping point is potentially beneficial, the change could be so big it would be a major adaptation challenge for an already troubled region,” said a PIK statement.

Another study in April showed that there has been a three- fold increase in rainstorms in the Sahel since 1982 and it brought more misery than relief. Further research revealed that destructive storms known to meteorologists as “mesoscale convective systems” (MCS) became more frequent at a level of 81 from 24 per rainy season since the 1980’s. There the monsoon lasts from June to September.

In the Sahel, MCS events are “some of the most explosive storms in the world”, the researchers said.

Although the storms bring along with them the blessing of rainfall, but that is not always a good thing. Water from violent storms tends to run off and not filter into the soil where crops can benefit. The water also washes off neutrient-holding agriculture soil from the drought-hit region.

“The enormous change that we might see would clearly pose a huge adaptation challenge to the Sahel,” Levermann said of the future.

“From Mauritania and Mali in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east, more than 100 million people are potentially affected that already now are confronted with a multifold of instabilities, including war.”

He warned that the Sahel may have to face years of “hard-to-handle variability” between drought and flood, as the tipping point approaches. “The dimension of the change calls for urgent action.”