Global Warming

Skrinking Caspian

Increased evaporation of the Caspian Sea over the past few decades has caused the huge central Asian lake to shrink to near the historic low set in the 1970s.

While the level of the huge body of water has fluctuated during the past several hundred years, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues from Russia, France and Azerbaijan say they expect it will continue to decline under what they describe as “global warming scenarios.”

The researchers predict that under current climate models, evaporation could cause the lake’s northern waters to vanish within 75 years.