List of places on land with elevations below sea level

This is a list of places below mean sea level that are on land.

Places in tunnels, mines, basements, dug holes (also with open sky), under water, under ice, 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 require a dry climate, otherwise rain would exceed evaporation and fill the area.

All figures are in meters below sea level, arranged by depth, lowest first:

Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Europe

Areas of the Netherlands located below sea level (right) compared to dry land (left).

North America

Sea level sign (2/3 of the way up the cliff face) above Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, USA

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 2,540 m (8,330 ft). It is subglacial, meaning that it is permanently covered by the largest ice cap 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 in the geological past, as measured by continuous volume of atmospheric air below sea level, was the dry bed of the Mediterranean Sea in the late Miocene period during the Messinian salinity crisis.

See also

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