SCIENCE MAGAZINE VIDEOS – JUNE 6, 2023: Some of the most notable lakes in the world, from the Great Salt Lake to Poyang Lake, have shrunk dramatically in recent decades. But because most lakes lack long-term, on-the-ground measurements, it was hard to say whether this was a widespread phenomenon.

Now, researchers have published a first-of-its-kind data set to look at how lake water storage has changed in nearly 2000 of the world’s largest lakes. They find significant global losses and tease out what might be driving these decreases.