Meter-high chimneys

Researchers find “white smokers” in the Dead Sea

The vents are more than seven meters high and have a diameter of two to three meters.(Bild: UFZ)

The Dead Sea has a salt content of around 30 percent - but in some parts of the huge salt lake, special, extremely salty water also flows out of the ground. Metre-high vents form there because the minerals crystallize.

The chimneys, known as "white smokers", are an important early warning indicator for collapse craters, as scientists from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig have now discovered.

These craters form in the vicinity of the Dead Sea and are a danger to the population. As the research team reported in the journal "Science of the Total Environment", the vents were formed wherever the land surface subsequently sank over a large area.

A collapse crater that formed overnight at Mineral Beach on the Dead Sea.(Bild: UFZ)

Dead Sea sinks one meter per year
According to the UFZ, the Dead Sea has been sinking by around one meter per year for more than 50 years because it is cut off from important tributaries and loses a lot of water through heavy evaporation due to drought and heat. The water level is currently around 438 meters below sea level. According to the researchers, this means that the riparian states are finding it increasingly difficult to access groundwater resources.

The scientists discovered that highly saline groundwater is flowing out through the vents at the bottom of the lake. As this brine (an aqueous solution of salts) has a slightly lower density than the water in the Dead Sea, it rises upwards like a jet.

Chimneys are over seven meters high
"It looks like smoke, but it's a salty liquid," explains hydrogeologist Christian Siebert. Some of these vents are more than seven meters high and have a diameter of two to three meters. The "white smokers" make it possible to predict very well which areas are at risk of collapse in the near future, explained Siebert.

The chimneys could be mapped very precisely using autonomous watercraft. "This would be the only and at the same time very efficient way of identifying regions that are about to collapse as acutely endangered," emphasized Siebert.