Fari Sow bent over to pick a green shoot from what is normally parched earth at this time of year, tearing its leaves to show their freshness.

“Thank God, this year we have grass,” the herder said on a livestock reserve in northern Senegal as plump cows munched the pasture behind him.

Abundant rains soaked West Africa’s Sahel region in recent months, causing catastrophic floods in some areas that raised concerns about the rising costs of extreme weather.

But this year’s downpours also created the thickest vegetation in years, satellite data show - a vital respite for Senegal’s farmers and its 3 million-strong herding community after six years of drought.

Since the early 1980s, the frequency of storms has tripled in the Sahel, according to a study here in the journal Nature, which said the trend was consistent with what scientists expect from human-driven climate change.

Herders are not used to unexpected benefits in the Sahel, whose semi-arid prairies stretch eastwards from Senegal across some of the world’s poorest countries.

The successive droughts in Senegal and neighbouring Mauritania and a particularly long dry season before the latest rains have helped permanently weaken pastoral livelihoods across the whole region, according to aid agency Action Against Hunger.

Meanwhile rising temperatures mean some areas could become as hot as the Sahara Desert within 80 years, according to a study in the online journal Climatic Change published in October.

This year, though, things are looking up.

RECORD VEGETATION

Sow’s long-horned white cows do not have to walk far to fill their bellies as they roam the sun-baked fields studded with acacia and baobab trees.