Mondo Knows Facts
Lake Chad is astonishingly shallow
The whole lake averages only a metre or two deep, so its outline shifts dramatically with rainfall It sits at the edge of the Sahara where Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon meet. Its area has swung from tens of thousands of square kilometres in wet years to a few thousand in dry ones. The lake has no outlet, so water leaves only by evaporation and seepage. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Food and Agriculture Organization
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the worldSpanning over nine million square kilometres, the Sahara covers much of North Africa.The Kalahari is not quite a true desertIt gets enough rain to grow grass and trees, so many classify it as dry savannaLake Assal is the lowest point in AfricaIts shore sits about 155 metres below sea level in a crater-like basin in DjiboutiLake Tanganyika is the longest freshwater lake in the worldStretching 673 kilometres through the East African Rift, Lake Tanganyika is shared by four nations.Lake Victoria is the largest tropical lake in the worldCovering nearly 60,000 square kilometres, Lake Victoria is shared by Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya.Sea level is not rising evenly around the worldLand sinking or rebounding changes local sea level far more than the global average in some places
🗺️ World Geographyfact 160 of 200
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Tags: lakes, africa, climate
Lake Chad is astonishingly shallow: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The whole lake averages only a metre or two deep, so its outline shifts dramatically with rainfall. The figure is taken from Food and Agriculture Organization, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.