Shocking Photos Show One of the World's Largest Lakes Disappearing

They're the kind of before-and-after photos you don't want to see. In newly released satellite images, NASA shows how one of the largest lakes in the world — the Aral Sea in Central Asia — is almost entirely dried out.

The series of photos has documented the water-level change for 14 years, although NASA says that "at the start of the series in 2000, the lake was already a fraction of its 1960 extent." (The Aral Sea was originally a Soviet Union project to irrigate surrounding lands and turn deserts into crop land.)

Part of the water disappearance was caused by a drought from 2005 to 2009, but NASA says dry conditions this year caused "the Southern Sea's eastern lobe to completely dry up for the first time in modern times."

And as the lake dried up, fisheries and other communities that depended on it were destroyed, salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides, and Winters became colder and Summers hotter and drier as a result.

Sadly, the Aral Sea is not the first land to suffer from climate change. For more shocking photo evidence, head here.