The Dead Sea, a unique hypersaline lake in the Jordan Rift Valley, is shrinking at an alarming pace. As the lowest point on Earth, this body of water is known globally for its extreme mineral concentration, allowing people to float effortlessly. Its water level is dropping by approximately 1.2 meters (four feet) every year, a rate that has accelerated dramatically in recent decades. The sea’s surface area has diminished by more than a third since 1930, illustrating the scale of this environmental crisis.
The Critical Reduction of River Inflow
The most significant factor driving the disappearance of the Dead Sea is the near-total diversion of its primary freshwater source, the Jordan River. Historically, the river delivered around 1.3 billion cubic meters of water annually into the northern end of the sea. Upstream water management projects by the surrounding nations have reduced this inflow to a mere trickle, sometimes as low as 20 to 30 million cubic meters per year, representing a reduction of up to 98%.
This dramatic reduction began in the 1960s when Israel completed its National Water Carrier project, diverting water from the Sea of Galilee. Jordan and Syria followed suit, building dams and canals to capture the river’s tributaries, such as the Yarmouk River. The water is drawn for the municipal, industrial, and extensive agricultural needs of the region’s rapidly growing populations.
The natural replenishment of the Dead Sea has been almost completely severed. This engineered water scarcity means the sea is no longer receiving the volume required to balance its high natural rate of evaporation in the arid climate. The Jordan River now contributes a negligible amount of flow, often consisting of polluted agricultural runoff and sewage.
Industrial Evaporation and Mineral Extraction
A second human activity directly extracting water is the mineral mining industry operating on the sea’s banks. Companies in both Israel and Jordan pump vast quantities of water from the main body of the sea into enormous, man-made solar evaporation ponds. These ponds are primarily located in the southern basin, which has already been separated from the northern basin by the receding shoreline.
This industrial process is designed to harvest valuable minerals, such as potash, bromine, and magnesium, which are highly concentrated in the Dead Sea’s brine. The process takes advantage of the extreme heat and low humidity of the region to accelerate evaporation far beyond the natural rate.
The companies continuously pump hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water into these shallow ponds annually. Solar energy quickly turns the water into vapor, leaving the desired minerals behind to be harvested. Although the companies may return some of the remaining brine, the net loss of water due to this industrial evaporation is a significant and uncompensated drain on the sea’s volume.
Climate Change and Increased Water Loss
Beyond direct human intervention, regional climate change exacerbates water loss from the Dead Sea. The arid climate of the valley makes the sea particularly vulnerable to even small shifts in temperature and precipitation patterns. Rising regional air temperatures directly increase the rate of evaporation from the sea’s already diminished surface.
Changing weather patterns also impact the sources that feed the Jordan River and the seasonal streams, known as wadis. Reduced rainfall and less snowmelt in the catchment areas mean that the natural flow that would ordinarily replenish the sea is further restricted. This intensifies the water deficit, compounding the effects of the upstream diversions.
The shrinking of the sea itself has initiated a feedback loop affecting the local microclimate. As the water body contracts, it reduces the moderating effect it once had on the valley’s air temperatures. This results in an increase in local temperatures and a decrease in humidity, which in turn drives up the rate of evaporation from the remaining surface water.
The Geological Consequences of Recession
The most visible and dangerous consequence of the receding water line is the widespread formation of massive sinkholes along the exposed shoreline. The sea level drop has caused the freshwater table in the surrounding land to fall in tandem, sometimes by up to a meter per year. This withdrawal of water destabilizes the sub-surface geology of the dried seabed.
Beneath the former seabed lies a thick layer of ancient salt deposits, or halite. The receding freshwater now flows into this exposed salt layer, causing it to dissolve. This dissolution process creates large, underground voids that can be dozens of meters wide.
Eventually, the ceiling of these underground cavities can no longer support the weight of the overlying sediment, leading to a sudden and catastrophic collapse. These sinkholes vary in size, with some reaching up to 25 meters in width and 20 meters in depth, posing a severe threat to infrastructure, tourism, and agriculture in the coastal areas.