A rare deluge of rain has created new lakes in the rolling sand dunes of parts of the Sahara, one of the driest places on Earth.

The Sahara is the world’s largest non-polar desert, stretching across 3.6 million square miles. Satellite images from September showed huge swaths of it carpeted in green as storms pushed further north than usual, a phenomenon some studies have linked to human-caused climate change.

More extreme rainfall events could be expected in the Sahara in the future, according to recent research, as fossil fuel pollution continues to heat up the planet and disrupt the water cycle.