How the Aral Sea dried up: move the slider across the years — the map and the numbers show how much water is left.
contour · modern
today
10%
of the 1960 water mirror (≈68 000 km²)
Mirror area6 990km²
Greater Aralestimate3 960km²
Lesser Aralestimate3 030km²
The split between the Large and Small Aral is an approximate estimate, not a measurement.
mirror area by year · Landsat
≈2005 → today
area by year — Landsat data
area by year — Landsat data
water level · DAHITI altimetry
Greater Aral (west)
23.7m
-1.2 m · over 10 years
Lesser (Northern) Aral
41.6m
-1.0 m · over 10 years
Greater Aral (east)
28.0m
-0.4 m · over 10 years
Sarygamysh
6.5m
-1.5 m · over 10 years
DAHITI satellite altimetry (DGFI-TUM) · metres above the geoid · points follow irregular satellite passes
What’s real: areas by year are measurements from Landsat imagery (open-data-kazakhstan). The 1960 contour (≈68 000 km²) is given only as a number — there is no vector version in open data. The Greater/Lesser Aral split is an illustrative interpolation, not a measurement. The ML projection is a model extrapolation to 2030 (dashed line, confidence band); if the ML service is unavailable, a demo extrapolation is shown and flagged as such.