Water Atlas
Water World / 01
Globe
Plan
Section
Filling the ocean…
Basemap
Vector
NASA
Vector detail, sharpens as you zoom
Layers
Reservoirs
10
Lakes & inland seas
13
Tide gauges
10
River gauges
10
Canals & waterways
7
Dams & barriers
17
Desalination
9
Cloud seeding
5
Water state at 2026: percentile of each feature’s own record
record low
median
record high
Zoom in to label features
1905 · Salton Sea created by canal failure
1914 · Panama Canal opens; Gatun Lake filled
1922 · Colorado River Compact signed
1932 · Afsluitdijk closes the Zuiderzee
1936 · Hoover Dam commissioned
1941 · Lake Mead reaches first fill
1954 · Karakum Canal construction begins
1960 · Aral Sea diversions begin
1963 · Lake Powell begins filling
1983 · Colorado Basin flood peak
1990 · Atatürk Dam fills; Euphrates briefly cut
1993 · Central Arizona Project completed
1993 · Satellite altimetry era begins
1997 · Millennium Drought, Australia
2000 · Colorado River megadrought begins
2010 · Three Gorges reaches 175 m
2013 · Sorek A online
2015 · Carlsbad online
2017 · Oroville spillway crisis
2018 · Cape Town 'Day Zero' averted
2020 · GERD filling begins
2020 · MOSE first operational closure
2022 · Yangtze drought & heat wave
2022 · Lake Mead record low
2022 · Great Salt Lake all-time low
2023 · Amazon record low water
2026
1×
2×
4×
Now