The International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957/1958 saw the emergence of a new subject of research: ' Planet Earth '. For the first time, scientists sought to understand and analyze the Earth as a whole. It was also the first time that the oceans became the subject of international cooperation.

Situated in central Asia, the Aral Sea was 50 years ago the fourth biggest lake in the world area-wise. Since the 1960s, it has shrunk by a factor of six, as a result of increased irrigation for the development of cotton and rice crops. At the end of the 1980s, it split into two basins, the Little Aral Sea in the north, and the Large Aral Sea to the south. Since then, these two basins have developed in very different ways.

El Niño is the phenomenon that is most characteristic of the interaction between ocean and atmosphere and of natural climate variability. Widely reported in the media, it is above all famous for the disastrous climate effects it has on the populations who live around and in the intertropical Pacific Ocean, especially on its eastern shores: Ecuador, Peru, Chile and the many islands scattered across it.