Alkaline lake
Qinghai Lake
Natural Earth’s outline of Qinghai Lake measures about 4,460 km² (1,720 mi²), the 35th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, and 1.14× the size of Cape Verde.
50 km
- Qinghai Lake
- Cape Verde
The numbers
- 4,460km²Area, measured1,720 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 4,400km²Area, publishedWikidata · agrees within 2%
- 21mGreatest depthaverage about 16.1 m
- 71.6km³VolumeWikidata
- 3,266mAbove sea levelSurface, Wikidata
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%.
What the numbers say about Qinghai Lake
- The Caspian Sea (called a sea or a lake, depending on the definition), the largest of the 104 lakes ranked on sizeversus, is 85.1× the size of Qinghai Lake; Qinghai Lake ranks 35th.
- Qinghai Lake sits between Lake Nipigon (4,540 km²) and Lake of the Woods (4,380 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, Qinghai Lake would be larger than 41 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 172nd by area, between Trinidad and Tobago (5,120 km²) and Cape Verde (3,930 km²).
- It is larger than 2 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Rhode Island, 2,830 km²) and smaller than 49.
- It is smaller than every one of the 31 provinces and regions of China.
- The closest US state is Delaware (5,170 km²): Qinghai Lake is 86% of the size of Delaware.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 21 m; with its volume that gives an average depth of about 16 m.
- Wikidata records a volume of 72 km³. Poured over Cape Verde (3,930 km²), that water would stand 18 m deep.
- Its surface lies about 3,266 m above sea level (Wikidata).
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 37°N is drawn about 1.6× too large in area, so Qinghai Lake looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Qinghai Lake stretches about 76 km north to south and 102 km east to west.
- Wikidata’s published figure of 4,400 km² agrees with our measured 4,460 km², to within 2%.
About the same size as
Countries
Chinese provinces
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of China contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Qinghai Lake. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Names
- Qinghai Lakethe name in this page’s titlesource: Size Versus (Wikidata’s English label is “Qinghai Lake”)
- Koko Noralso calledsource: Natural Earth
- Qinghaialso calledsource: Natural Earth
- Qinghai Hualso calledsource: Natural Earth
Where Qinghai Lake ranks
Qinghai Lake is the 35th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11