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Cores Reveal When Dead Sea "Died"

(BBC News) Jonathan Amos - Sediments drilled from beneath the Dead Sea reveal that this remarkable body of water all but disappeared 120,000 years ago, demonstrating just how dry the Middle East can become during Earth's warm phases. "The reason the Dead Sea is going down is because virtually all of the fresh water flowing into it is being taken by the countries around it," said Steve Goldstein, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, US. "Global climate models are predicting that this region in particular is going to become more arid in the future." Prof. Goldstein presented the results of the drilling work at the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco. The Dead Sea is at the lowest land point on the planet, more than 400m below sea level. Since 1997, the lake's surface has fallen more than 10m. The size of the Dead Sea has fluctuated with the coming and going of ice ages. In the midst of the last ice age some 25,000 years ago, the Dead Sea reached its maximum extent, with the then water surface standing 260m above where it is today.
2011-12-09 00:00:00
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