The water level of the drying Aral Sea has risen by 48 centimeters for the first time since October 2022, Kazpravda.kz reports citing the website of the Akimat of the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan.
So far, the volume of water collected in the North Aral Sea has decreased from 27 billion cubic meters to 18.5 billion cubic meters, and the water level to 40.42 mBS (a meter of the Baltic system), said Acting Head of the Aral-Syrdarya Basin Inspectorate Zeynulla Kaztoganov.
However, since October 2022, to date, the sea level has risen for the first time to 40.90 mBS, or 48 cm, and the volume of collected water amounted to 19.7 billion cubic meters.
At the same time, if last year the volume of water entering the Aral Sea amounted to 816 million cubic meters, then in 2 months of this year 803 million cubic meters were received.
The Aral Sea began to dry up in the 1980s, when the cotton republics of the USSR Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan began to use the waters of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers flowing into the Aral Sea to irrigate cotton fields. As a result, the water area of the sea decreased by 80%, and dust storms began in the region. Salt dust fell on glaciers in the mountains, which increased their melting and environmental disasters throughout the region.
In order to reduce the formation of dust storms, Uzbekistan has been planting trees on the bottom of the dry part of the sea for the past five years.
CentralasianLIGHT.org
March 5, 2023