Dead Sea

Deep under the ground, the land here is cracked.

A long piece of land slowly sank down between the cracks. It made a very deep valley. Rivers ran into the valley and filled it with water.

The Dead Sea sits on a crack in Earth's crust where two huge pieces of the crust, called plates, meet. Along this line a long block of land has dropped down between big breaks called faults, making a deep valley. NASA describes the land here as sinking for thousands of years as Africa and Asia pull apart.

Rivers, mostly the Jordan River, drain into this deep basin. The water cannot flow out to the ocean, so it leaves only by evaporating into the dry desert air. Each time water evaporates, its salt stays behind, and over a very long time the lake became extremely salty. In the Pleistocene, the time of the Ice Ages between about 2.6 million and 11,700 years ago, the lake was much bigger: about 200 meters higher than today and some 320 kilometers long.

Britannica places the Dead Sea in a graben, a downfaulted block of crust, between transform faults on the plate boundary that runs north from the Red Sea–Gulf of Suez spreading center to the Taurus Mountains of southern Türkiye. NASA's Earth Observatory describes the same Jordan rift valley as land between Africa and Asia that has been subsiding for millennia as they pull apart.

In the Miocene (23 to 5.3 million years ago), as the Arabian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, upheaval produced the Transjordanian highlands and the central range to the west and fractures that let the graben drop. From about 2.5 million years ago, streams laid down thick shale, clay, sandstone, rock salt and gypsum. In the Pleistocene the lake stood about 200 m above its modern level and stretched some 320 km, held back from the Gulf of Aqaba by a 30 m rise in Wadi Al-ʿArabah. Over the past 10,000 years evaporation outpaced rainfall, and the lake shrank to its present form, leaving deposits 1.6 to 6.4 km thick in the valley.

The Dead Sea is getting smaller.

People use the river water that used to fill it. So less water comes in. The sunshine dries up more water than the river brings.

For several decades in the mid-1900s, the Dead Sea's surface stayed at about 400 meters below sea level. Then, beginning in the 1960s, people began taking much of the Jordan River's water, which NASA says serves the communities around it, and more of the lake's own water was used by industry. With less water coming in, the level started to fall.

NASA reported in 2019 that the level had been dropping about 1.2 meters a year for two or three decades, faster than the 0.7 meters a year of the 1970s and 1980s. The lake split into two parts, and the shallow southern part is now mostly a set of large pools where salts are collected.

Britannica gives a surface level of about 400 m below sea level for several decades of the mid-20th century, after a high of 389 m below sea level in 1896. Beginning in the 1960s, much of the Jordan River's flow was diverted and commercial use of the lake's water increased; by the mid-2010s the level was about 430 m below sea level. NASA's Earth Observatory reported in 2019 a fall of about 1.2 m a year over the previous two to three decades, up from 0.7 m a year in the 1970s and 1980s, with lake water also pumped to evaporation ponds that extract sodium chloride and potassium salts.

The effects are visible from space. The Al-Lisān peninsula extended until the northern and southern basins were separated by dry land, and the southern basin became dozens of evaporation pools. Britannica reports that as the water dropped, groundwater dissolved caverns in buried salt, and several hundred sinkholes have formed, some in areas popular with tourists.

Go into the water with a grown-up.

Float on top, and keep your head out of the water. The salt stings your eyes. Afterward, wash off in a fresh water shower.

The water is very salty, so Accessible Jordan's guide to the Dead Sea tells visitors not to put their heads under the water: the salt stings the eyes and is harmful if swallowed. It also advises not shaving before going in, and rinsing off with fresh water straight afterward. Amman Beach, the main public beach on the eastern shore, has changing rooms and fresh water showers.

The land near the shore is changing too: Britannica reports hundreds of sinkholes, some near places tourists visit, so keep to the beaches that are open.

Accessible Jordan's guide to the Dead Sea (2026) gives plain rules for bathers: do not put your head under the water, because the salt stings the eyes and is harmful if swallowed; avoid shaving beforehand; and rinse off with fresh water straight afterward, to protect skin and swimwear. Amman Beach, the main public beach, has changing rooms and fresh water showers.

The shoreline itself needs respect. Britannica reports several hundred sinkholes formed as groundwater dissolved buried salt behind the retreating water, some in areas popular with tourists, so it is wise to keep to the beaches that are open. In Jordan, Mujib's reserve status under the Natural Reserves and National Park bylaw, with zoning and monitoring since 1987, protects the streams and wildlife on the eastern shore.