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Lake-level records provide a rich resource of information about past changes in effective moisture, but water-balance fluctuations can be driven by a number of different climate variables and it is often difficult to pinpoint their exact cause. This understanding is essential, however, for reconciling divergent paleo-records or for making predictions about future lake-level variations. This research uses a series of models, the NCAR CCSM3, a lake energy-balance and a lake water-balance model, to examine the reasons for lake-level changes in monsoonal Asia and arid central Asia between the early (8.5 ka), middle (6.0 ka) and late (ca. 1800 AD) Holocene. Our results indicate that the components of the lake water balance responsible for lake-level changes varied by region and through time. High lake levels at 8.5 and 6.0 ka in the monsoon region were caused by the combined effects of low lake evaporation and high precipitation. The low lake evaporation resulted from low winter solar radiation and high summer cloud cover. Precipitation associated with the mid-latitude westerlies increased from the early to middle Holocene and maintained high lake levels throughout most of arid central Asia ca. 6 ka. The modeled evolution of lake level in arid central Asia from the mid to late Holocene was spatially heterogeneous, due to different sensitivities of the northern and southern parts of the region to seasonally-changing insolation, particularly regarding the duration of lake ice cover. The model results do not suggest that precipitation and lake evaporation changes compete with one another in forcing lake-level change, as has been hypothesized.