Sea dries up - what would happen?

Long answer: Well, I'd have to say that you would have a lot of dry land. Desert all around. An ocean (I know this is a fantasy, so I'm assuming normal physics and weather rules apply) even a small sea is usually the source of precipitation for a large area. As a kid we studied these water charts which basically show the sun evaporating moisture from the sea, clouds forming and moving inland, the clouds raining over the inland areas, and the runoff from the rain forming streams that went back out to sea and started the cycle all over again.

Short answer: I would imagine you would end up with Utah, USA. Salt flats, arid climate, rocky desert.

Plague. When all the creatures that inhabited that sea flop on the sand and die, they'll rot. Bring on the plague.

Since water is drawn out of the sea by the sun, cooled into clouds that then move across to rain on the nearby land--you'd get drought, animal migration to better feeding grounds by herbivores and carivores, agriculture would suffer, the fishing industry would be nil, any travel by water for pleasure or merchants would have to go by land--taking longer and cost more. Once the new sea bottom dried out, salt harvesting could happen, it would be a land bridge and perhaps be difficult to defend agaisnt an army crossing it.

Define "sea". Is it connected to the ocean or landlocked?


Black Sea scenario:

You couldn't empty the Black Sea. Oh, if the water disappeared instantaneously, it would be briefly dry, but the ocean would surge through the Bosporus to fill it up again.

It's a wild-ass guess, but I bet it would take only a few years (ten?) to refill. Less if the Bosporus were wider. There would be catastrophic erosion along the banks and floor of the Bosporus.

There would be some temporary weather changes, such as a decrease in precipitation in the surrounding area, especially on the side that is downwind for the prevailing winds, but the weather would gradually return to normal as the water level rises (more precisely, as the surface area increases).

The ecosystem right along the shoreline would be destroyed, of course. But I'm not sure how severe the effect would be as you move farther out to areas that weren't wetlands to begin with. There would be some domino effects as changes in one ecosystem trigger changes for its neighbors.

Rivers running into it would flow much faster, possibly draining some lakes completely. There would be tremendous erosion damage along the course of those rivers.

If people were living around it, fishing probably provided a significant part of their diet, so expect a famine. That would be further aggravated by reduced precipitation for crops. In a Black Sea scenario, the crop reduction would be fairly short term, though. Fish population would take time to recover, on the other hand, so fishing wouldn't be able resume right away.


Caspian Sea scenario:

Maybe you mean something the size of the Black Sea but landlocked like the Caspian Sea? That's really just a huge, slightly salty lake. There are still rivers running into it so it would eventually fill back up, but now we're talking about a very long time: possibly centuries, more likely millennia.

You would get the same shoreline ecosystem loss mentioned above and the same torrential flow and erosion of the rivers. You also get the same weather changes, but instead of being temporary, they become essentially permanent, so are better referred to as climate changes.

Google Lake Bonneville. The main difference there is the salt. When Lake Bonneville evaporated, the salt was left behind. Presumably your magical accident would remove the salt along with the water. (Or are you boiling the water away? That would leave the salt behind, but then you need to account for the effects of that much heat.)

Why not just get a little Ice Nine?

Wouldn't it likely be cloudy 24/7? If the water evaporated, where would it go if not the sky? It's not like it could escape our atmosphere.

Dunno. The water's got to go somewhere.

The Aral sea in Uzbekistan has dried up and is now the largest unmapped area on Earth .I have flown over it, and all you can see is a vast white desert . You can learn more at http://orexca.com/aral_ sea.shtml . Sorry ,this link will not work properly . However go to this page,enter Aral sea in the search box ,and look for water resources .

glutton said:

Another question: what would the sea bottom feel like to walk on after a few months? It would be solid right? Would the silt left behind be loose or packed?

Click to expand...

Good question. I have no idea how solid it would feel to walk on, but it raises an issue I didn't think of before.

There would be terrible dust storms, both in the sea bottom itself and in the surrounding areas. Even if the silt felt solid when you walked on it, it would still be loose enough for the wind to blow it. The area downwind for the prevailing winds, the same places that previously got the most precipitation, would get hit the worst.

Probably just like a beach

We would all die. There would be no water and therefore no life.