Lake · China
Poyang Lake
Largest freshwater lake in China, located in Jiangxi Province
- Area
- 2,398km²
- Max depth
- 25m
- Average depth
- 6.8m
- Elevation
- 10m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 1,257km
- Volume
- 16.4km³
Poyang Lake is a lake in China. It covers 2,398 km². On average it is 6.8 m deep, and 25 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 10 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
Water temperature
There is no reliable satellite record of the water temperature for this lake yet.
On the shore, afternoons reach 32 °C on average in July and 9 °C in January. The driest month is December (59 mm of rain), the wettest June (305 mm).
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.
Climate: 1991–2020 average
| Month | Water°C | Water high°C | Air high°C | Air low°C | Rainmm | Rainy daysdays | Sunh/day | Windkm/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | — | — | 9 | 2 | 77 | 11 | 2.0 | 14 |
| February | — | — | 12 | 4 | 110 | 12 | 1.9 | 15 |
| March | — | — | 17 | 9 | 173 | 16 | 2.6 | 14 |
| April | — | — | 23 | 15 | 206 | 16 | 3.5 | 14 |
| May | — | — | 27 | 20 | 228 | 16 | 3.9 | 14 |
| June | — | — | 29 | 24 | 305 | 18 | 3.3 | 13 |
| July | — | — | 32 | 27 | 205 | 15 | 6.1 | 14 |
| August | — | — | 32 | 26 | 146 | 16 | 5.9 | 13 |
| September | — | — | 29 | 22 | 95 | 9 | 5.1 | 14 |
| October | — | — | 24 | 16 | 61 | 7 | 4.4 | 15 |
| November | — | — | 18 | 10 | 92 | 9 | 3.6 | 14 |
| December | — | — | 11 | 3 | 59 | 7 | 3.1 | 14 |
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 32 days before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 162,422 km² of land.
- About 5,985 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 7.2 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Poyang Lake
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
- 2beaches and swimming spots
- —campsites
- —boat hire and water-sport clubs
- —marinas and slipways
- 3ferry piers
- 1viewpoints
- 1hotels, B&Bs and chalets
- —fishing spots
- 2restaurants and cafés
Towns on the shore
- Gongqingcheng47,284 people
- Hukou
- Nankang
- Duchang
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Nanchang Changbei International Airport (KHN), 50 km in a straight line.
OpenStreetMap 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 | 9.4 | 12.4 | 17.0 | 22.7 | 26.9 | 29.3 | 31.9 | 31.6 | 28.8 | 24.1 | 18.0 | 11.2 |
| 2020 | +0.9 | +2.1 | +1.1 | −0.5 | +1.1 | +0.9 | −0.8 | +0.7 | −1.9 | −1.8 | +0.3 | −0.8 |
| 2021 | +0.9 | +4.3 | +0.9 | −1.1 | −0.1 | +1.1 | ±0.0 | +0.3 | +2.6 | ±0.0 | +0.5 | +2.2 |
| 2022 | +1.2 | −3.1 | +3.0 | +0.9 | −1.8 | +0.1 | +0.8 | +2.5 | +2.5 | +1.0 | +3.9 | −1.1 |
| 2023 | +2.3 | +0.9 | +2.0 | +0.8 | +0.4 | +0.9 | +0.4 | +0.2 | +0.8 | +0.7 | +1.1 | +0.6 |
| 2024 | +1.4 | −2.1 | +1.9 | +1.5 | ±0.0 | −0.2 | +0.8 | +1.5 | +2.5 | +0.3 | +2.0 | +0.8 |
| 2025 | +3.8 | −0.4 | +1.1 | +2.6 | +1.1 | +1.0 | +1.6 | +3.3 | +3.4 | +3.3 | +1.1 | +4.1 |
+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 (Q207690) · 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.
