Its shore is the lowest dry land on Earth, past 440 metres below sea level
The commonly quoted figure of about 430 m dates from around 2010; the level falls roughly a metre a year
Geography · Physical geography
The Dead Sea
Jordan, Israel and the West Bank — the Jordan Rift Valley
A hypersaline lake in the Jordan Rift Valley whose shore is the lowest dry land on Earth — long quoted at 430 metres below sea level and now past 440 and dropping about a metre a year. Its water is roughly ten times saltier than the ocean, dense enough to float a bather, and too saline for fish; the name records the absence of macroscopic life, though archaea and algae do live in it.
How to spot them
- ▸The lowest exposed land surface on Earth, and falling fast
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Masada', 'Qumran', 'Lisan Peninsula', 'sinkholes', 'potash'
- ▸Water so dense that bathers float without effort; no fish can survive in it
- ▸Fed by the Jordan, but with no outlet — it loses water only by evaporation
Key facts
A terminal lake fed by the Jordan, with no outflow at all
Water leaves only by evaporation, concentrating the dissolved salts
About ten times saltier than the ocean — roughly 34% dissolved solids
Rich in magnesium, potassium and bromide salts as well as sodium chloride
Bathers float on it effortlessly because of its density
Around 1.24 kg per litre, against about 1.03 for seawater
Scrolls hidden in caves on its north-western shore were found by a shepherd boy in 1947 (1947)
The Dead Sea Scrolls, from the settlement at Qumran
Herod's clifftop fortress of Masada overlooks its western shore
Site of the Zealots' last stand against Rome in AD 73–74
Its retreating shoreline has opened thousands of collapse sinkholes
Fresh groundwater dissolves buried salt layers as the brine withdraws
Quick-fire facts
- •Its surface is the lowest exposed land on Earth — about 430 m below sea level when the familiar figure was set, and now beyond 440 m
- •The water is roughly 34% salt, close to ten times the salinity of seawater
- •Its maximum depth is about 300 m, in the northern basin; the shallow southern basin is now mostly evaporation ponds
- •It has shrunk dramatically since the 1960s, mainly because Jordan River water is diverted for irrigation and supply
- •It sits in the Jordan Rift Valley, part of the Dead Sea Transform fault system
- •Israel and Jordan both work it industrially for potash, bromine and magnesium
- •Aristotle and Josephus both remarked on its buoyancy in antiquity
- •Common misconception: it is not entirely lifeless — halophilic archaea and the alga Dunaliella live in it, and blooms occasionally turn it red
- •Another misconception: it is a lake, not a sea, and 'Dead Sea' translates its Hebrew name Yam ha-Melah, the Salt Sea
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- NASA Earth Observatory — The Shrinking Dead Sea
- Tina M. Niemi, Zvi Ben-Avraham and Joel Gat (eds) — The Dead Sea: The Lake and Its Setting