The Great Salt Lake isn’t just drying out. It’s warming the planet.

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1. Like some dystopian astronaut, Melissa Cobo would hike the searing flats of the dried-out [Great Salt Lake](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/06/great-salt-lake-utah-drying-up/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2) every couple weeks, hauling a heavy backpack attached by a hose to what looked like the lid of a cake dome. What remained of the lake often seemed out of reach as she struggled through hot mud, clay and a weird crystalline layer that broke with her footsteps onto a greenish muck.

   “You see the water, but you never actually get to it, no matter how many hours you walk,” Cobo said.

   Through these grueling treks, the then-Utah State University graduate student and her adviser, Soren Brothers, discovered more disturbing evidence that dried-out lakes are a significant source of [carbon dioxide emissions](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2024/carbon-dioxide-emissions-source-earth/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5) — one that has not been included in the official accounting of how much carbon the world is releasing into the [warming atmosphere.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2024/mapping-our-fast-warming-world/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5)

   In a new study in the journal One Earth, the researchers calculated that 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were released from the drying bed of the [Great Salt Lake](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/25/great-salt-lake-mormons-water/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8) in 2020, the year Cobo and others collected the samples. This would amount to about a 7 percent increase in Utah’s human-caused [emissions,](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/07/23/us-climate-goals-emissions/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8) the authors found.

   Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/07/25/great-salt-lake-emissions/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/07/25/great-salt-lake-emissions/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)