This is a list of places on land below mean sea level.
Places artificially created such as tunnels, mines, basements, and dug holes, or places under water, or existing temporarily as a result of ebbing of sea tide etc., are not included. Places where seawater and rainwater is pumped away are included. Fully natural places below
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised ...
require a dry climate; otherwise, rain would exceed
evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization that occurs on the surface of a liquid as it changes into the gas phase. High concentration of the evaporating substance in the surrounding gas significantly slows down evaporation, such as when humidi ...
and fill the area.
All figures are in meters below mean sea level (as locally defined), arranged by depth, lowest first:
Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Europe
North America
Oceania
South America
Historic and ice-covered areas
Deeper and larger than any of the trenches in the list above is the
Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica, at a depth of . It is subglacial, covered permanently by the largest glacier in the world. Therefore, it is not included in any list on the page. If the ice melted it would be covered by sea.
The biggest dry land area below sea level that has been known to exist during the geological past, as measured by continuous volume of atmospheric air below sea level, was the dry bed of the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...
of the late
Miocene period during the
Messinian salinity crisis
The Messinian salinity crisis (MSC), also referred to as the Messinian event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partial or nearly complete desiccation (dry ...
.
See also
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Extreme points of Earth
This article lists extreme locations on Earth that hold geographical records or are otherwise known for their geophysical or meteorological superlatives. All of these locations are Earth-wide extremes; extremes of individual continents or coun ...
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List of countries by lowest point
The following sortable table lists land surface elevation extremes by country or dependent territory.
Topographic elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential grav ...
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List of submarine topographical features
This is a list of submarine topographical features, oceanic landforms and topographic elements.
Abyssal plain
An abyssal plain is an underwater plain on the deep ocean floor, usually found at depths between and . Lying generally between the fo ...
References
External links
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* {{cite web, url=http://geology.com/below-sea-level/ , website=geology.com, title=Land Below Sea Level
Elevation
The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vertic ...
Elevation
The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vertic ...
Elevation
The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vertic ...
Sea Level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised ...
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