{"id":20348,"date":"2026-07-20T12:37:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T07:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=20348"},"modified":"2026-07-21T13:50:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T08:20:41","slug":"aral-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/aral-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Aral Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Aral Sea Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drying of the Aral Sea has released more than 200 teragrams of carbon from exposed lake-bed sediments, turning a once-stable carbon reservoir into an active source of greenhouse gases, according to a new study. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Aral Sea<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a <\/span><b>saline lake <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in <\/span><b>Central Asia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> straddling the<\/span><b> boundary between Uzbekistan<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Kazakhstan <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to the south and north.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>once a large saltwater lake in Central Asia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the <\/span><b>world\u2019s fourth-largest body of inland water.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The remnants of it nestle in the climatically inhospitable heart of Central Asia, to the <\/span><b>east of the<a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/caspian-sea\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Caspian Sea<\/a>.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Formation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Aral Sea depression was formed toward the end of the Neogene Period (which lasted from about 23 to 2.6 million years ago).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>made by waters <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">from the <\/span><b>Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that were dependent on glacial melt.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Climate<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Aral Sea is located within the<\/span><b> harsh climate region <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of Central Asia.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The area experiences a <\/span><b>desert-continental climate, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">characterized by hot summers, cold winters, and varying diurnal air temperature.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Reason for its Disappearance:<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The lake <\/span><b>once covered 68,000 sq.km. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">between the Kyzylorda and Aktobe regions in Kazakhstan and the Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the lake <\/span><b>started shrinking<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><b>1960s<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, when the<\/span><b> Soviet government <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">decided to <\/span><b>divert the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, to irrigate the surrounding<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> desert region.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>By the 1980<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s, the Aral Sea had <\/span><b>shed 80% of its volum<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">e, resulting in the<\/span><b> extinction of native fish species<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and severe ecological degradation, including the <\/span><b>emergence of the Aralkum Desert.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today it is on the<\/span><b> verge of complete disappearance<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>News<\/b><strong>:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/bioengineer.org\/aral-sea-drying-turns-carbon-sink-into-major-carbon-source\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>BIO<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aral Sea is a saline lake in Central Asia straddling the boundary between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to the south and north. Read more about Aral Sea, Location, Formation, Climate, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":114151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8808,21,22,23],"class_list":["post-20348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-aral-sea","tag-prelims-pointers","tag-upsc-current-affairs","tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20348"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114165,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20348\/revisions\/114165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}