Aral region · questions and answers
To dashboardAralkum is a salt flat on the exposed bed of the Aral Sea. Strong wind lifts fine dust from it carrying salts, fertilizer residues and pesticides that the rivers brought for decades.
PM10 and especially PM2.5 particles penetrate deep into the airways and into the blood. This raises the risk of lung, heart and vascular disease, aggravates asthma and allergies; children, the elderly and pregnant women suffer first.
PM10 are suspended particles up to 10 micrometers, PM2.5 — up to 2.5 micrometers. The smaller the particle, the deeper it penetrates the body, so PM2.5 is more dangerous.
In this service the PM10 thresholds are: below 55 µg/m³ — normal, 55–155 — watch, 155–355 — warning, above 355 — emergency. Settlement statuses and automatic feed-event generation are built on these thresholds.
Since 1960 the Aral has lost most of its water: the mirror area shrank from about 68 000 km² to ≈6 990 km² (Landsat imagery, 2018; the open-data-kazakhstan dataset) — nearly 10-fold.
The sea has two fates. The Greater (Southern) Aral, fed by the Amu Darya, keeps drying up. The Lesser (Northern) Aral in Kazakhstan is fed by the Syr Darya: after the Kokaral Dam was built (2005) it is recovering — the level rose, water returned closer to Aralsk, fishing is reviving.
The service covers 10 settlements in the three countries of the coast and exposed seabed: Uzbekistan (Moynaq, Qongʻirot, Chimboy, Taxiatosh, Xoʻjayli, Nukus), Kazakhstan (Aralsk, Qazaly) and Turkmenistan (Dashoguz, Konye-Urgench).
The rivers themselves are born higher in the basin — in the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — so the Aral’s fate depends on the water use of the basin states (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Афганистан).
Air quality (PM10, PM2.5, dust, AOD) and weather come from open Open-Meteo (the CAMS model and Forecast API). Amu Darya and Syr Darya discharge — GloFAS (Open-Meteo Flood API). Sea area by year — Landsat imagery (the open-data-kazakhstan dataset).
On top of the open data run our own ML models (PM10 forecast, area projection, anomaly detection) and an AI summary with a deterministic fallback. The full list of sources is on the About page.
No. This is a demonstration public service, not an official warning system. Data comes from open model sources and may differ from ground measurements.
For safety decisions, rely on the official hydrometeorology and civil-protection services of your country.
The air-quality and weather forecast is hourly. Settlement pages are recomputed about every 30 minutes; the dashboard pulls fresh data on load. The time of the last update is shown in the dashboard header.
Close windows and doors, limit time outdoors, wear a respirator mask when going out. Protect children, the elderly and people with respiratory disease; if you feel worse, seek medical help.
Check your settlement’s status on the air-quality page and plan outdoor tasks for the clean-air hours in advance.