Salt lake · Argentina
Mar Chiquita
Salt lake in Argentina
- Area
- 6,133km²
- Max depth
- 10m
- Average depth
- 2.4m
- Elevation
- 69m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 1,519km
- Volume
- 14.5km³
Mar Chiquita is a salt lake in Argentina. It covers 6,133 km². On average it is 2.4 m deep, and 10 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 69 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Mar Chiquita?
The water is warmest in January, around 26 °C at the surface, and coldest in July, around 12 °C. The surface averages 20 °C or more from November to March: comfortable for most swimmers.
It does not normally freeze in winter.
On the shore, afternoons reach 34 °C on average in January and 18 °C in July. The driest month is July (10 mm of rain), the wettest March (128 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (79 readings). Shallow bays and beaches are often warmer.
From above
The whole lake from space
Month by month
The year at the lake, month by month
Not a forecast: these are averages over many years. Water is the 2013–2021 average; air, rain, sun and wind are the 1991–2020 average.
Water: 2013–2021 averageClimate: 1991–2020 average
| Month | Water°C | Water high°C | Air high°C | Air low°C | Rainmm | Rainy daysdays | Sunh/day | Windkm/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 26 | 26 | 34 | 22 | 127 | 12 | 9.4 | 16 |
| February | 25 | 26 | 32 | 21 | 116 | 12 | 8.4 | 16 |
| March | 23 | 24 | 30 | 18 | 128 | 11 | 7.4 | 16 |
| April | 20 | 21 | 26 | 15 | 86 | 9 | 6.3 | 15 |
| May | 16 | 18 | 21 | 11 | 32 | 5 | 5.5 | 15 |
| June | 13 | 14 | 18 | 8 | 15 | 3 | 5.3 | 15 |
| July | 12 | 12 | 18 | 6 | 10 | 2 | 6.0 | 16 |
| August | 13 | 14 | 21 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 7.3 | 17 |
| September | 15 | 17 | 24 | 11 | 34 | 4 | 8.0 | 19 |
| October | 18 | 20 | 28 | 15 | 70 | 9 | 8.1 | 20 |
| November | 22 | 23 | 31 | 18 | 116 | 12 | 9.3 | 19 |
| December | 25 | 26 | 33 | 20 | 114 | 12 | 9.4 | 17 |
Water: LakeTEMP (Landsat 8, 2013–2021). Air, rain, sun and wind: NASA POWER, 1991–2020 averages. A rainy day has at least 1 mm of rain. Sunshine hours are derived from measured solar radiation.
Size & depth
How big, how deep
- On average, water stays in the lake for about 15 months before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 129,876 km² of land.
- About 371 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 5.5 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Mar Chiquita
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Miramar1,979 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Ingeniero Aeronáutico Ambrosio L.V. Taravella International Airport (COR), 183 km in a straight line.
Car hire at COR airport (Cordoba)Discover Cars · Affiliate linkOpenStreetMap is built by volunteers: when a number is low, it may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
Recent years
How each month compared
Afternoon high on the shore. The first row is the reference, the 1991–2020 average in °C; the years below show the difference from it: warmer in orange, cooler in blue.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991–2020 average | 33.8 | 32.4 | 29.7 | 25.6 | 21.1 | 18.2 | 18.0 | 20.9 | 24.3 | 28.2 | 31.2 | 33.0 |
| 2020 | −0.3 | +0.1 | +3.3 | +0.8 | +0.6 | +0.5 | −0.9 | +1.2 | +0.7 | +0.6 | +0.9 | +0.6 |
| 2021 | −1.3 | −0.8 | −0.3 | +0.3 | −0.6 | −0.6 | +0.8 | +0.9 | +1.4 | +1.9 | −0.3 | +2.8 |
| 2022 | +2.5 | +0.4 | −0.9 | −0.1 | −1.1 | −1.1 | +2.1 | +0.3 | −0.4 | −0.3 | +2.0 | +2.3 |
| 2023 | +1.9 | +1.2 | +4.4 | +0.9 | +1.8 | +1.9 | +2.0 | +2.8 | +1.4 | +1.2 | −0.5 | −1.8 |
| 2024 | −0.8 | +1.7 | +2.9 | −0.5 | −3.7 | +2.5 | −1.1 | −1.3 | +3.3 | +1.8 | +0.8 | −0.9 |
| 2025 | +2.0 | +5.2 | +0.3 | −0.7 | +2.6 | −1.4 | +0.6 | −0.2 | +0.5 | +0.8 | −0.2 | ±0.0 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
About these numbers
| Outline, area, depth, volume | HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al. 2016) · CC BY 4.0 |
|---|---|
| Water temperature and ice | LakeTEMP v1 (Korver et al. 2024), Landsat 8 2013–2021 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Air, rain, sun, wind | NASA POWER, 1991–2020 · public domain |
| Names and description | Wikidata (Q782399) · CC0 |
| Around the shore | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every figure is an average or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
