File:Lake Chad surrounded by Dust (MODIS 2021-12-05).jpg

English: Strong winds surrounded Lake Chad with dust from the Sahara Desert in early December 2021. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the sandy scene on December 2.

A butterfly-shaped swath of green near the center marks the current limits of Lake Chad. Once an expansive sea, Lake Chad has been steadily shrinking. By the 1960s, the sea had very slowly regressed to simply a large freshwater lake, but since that time the speed of shrinkage has been rapid. Today the lake spans less than one-tenth of the area it covered in the 1960s, yet it supports more than 30 million people in four countries, including agriculture, fishing, animals, and economic activity. The countries that share Lake Chad, from north and moving clockwise, are Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger.

A thick plume of light-colored dust sweeps over a large part of Chad, north of Lake Chad. It is so thick that the ground is obscured from view. To the south and southwest of the lake, the dust has broadened and thinned, creating a fan over 900 km (560 mi) wide. Dust storms are common year-round in this area and are a major hazard for both people and animals.