The World’s Largest Lake

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The World’s Largest Lake

© ekipaj / iStock via Getty Images

Americans believe they have the world’s largest lake system in the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is the largest lake in the Western Hemisphere. However, one huge lake in the Eastern Hemisphere is the largest in the world. (This is the largest lake in America.)
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The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water. Unlike the Great Lakes, it is salt-rich, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the eighth largest salt lake in the Western Hemisphere, although it is shrinking rapidly.
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The Caspian Sea covers 144,000 square miles. Lake Superior covers 32,000. North to south, the Caspian Sea is 750 miles long, about the distance from New York to Chicago. At its greatest width, it measures 200 miles.

The Volga River is the major source of water for the Caspian Sea, which reaches its north end. Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkmenistan surround it.
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The Caspian Sea is a major source of crude due to underwater drilling, much like the system in the Gulf of Mexico. There have been disputes about which countries adjacent to the lake own this crude.
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According to NASA, human use of water could reduce the lake level by as many as 98 feet by 2100.
The American agency further states, “The use or diversion of water for human activity is also an important driver of water loss in the Caspian.” This process already has begun and is a distinction shared with many of the world’s largest lakes. Another factor in the drop has been identified as global climate change, which has affected many water sources in the western United States.

The Caspian Sea will be the world’s largest lake indefinitely, but the decrease in its size is inevitable, considering the causes.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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