Top 10 Largest Deserts In the World
Earth is a only habitable planet in our solar system. But there are also some of areas like Deserts that are a little hostile to life, but still plants and animals in these areas adopted these hostile conditions. Deserts covers approximately one-third of our planet’s land surface. Deserts are usually presumed as hot, arid areas with vast spans of sand and dry earth. It is rain which defines desert, not sand and heat. A desert is a region that receives less than 25 cm of precipitation per year on average and are formed by long-lasting drought conditions.
Deserts are found in all continents of the world and they are often most sparsely populated regions. There are 33 major deserts, varying from subtropical and cool coastal to cold winter deserts. Some of these deserts formed nearby oceans or bodies of water. The Antarctic is largest polar desert, measuring 5.5 million square miles, it is the largest desert in the world. While the Sahara is the largest subtropical desert in the world, measuring 3.5 million square miles. Only 15% of the world’s desert surface is made up of pure sand and they are locate in the Sahara and the Arabian deserts. While remaining surfaces is made up of rocks, gravel, pebbles and in Antarctica it’s all ice.
Deserts are found in all continents of the world and they are often most sparsely populated regions. There are 33 major deserts, varying from subtropical and cool coastal to cold winter deserts. Some of these deserts formed nearby oceans or bodies of water. The Antarctic is largest polar desert, measuring 5.5 million square miles, it is the largest desert in the world. While the Sahara is the largest subtropical desert in the world, measuring 3.5 million square miles. Only 15% of the world’s desert surface is made up of pure sand and they are locate in the Sahara and the Arabian deserts. While remaining surfaces is made up of rocks, gravel, pebbles and in Antarctica it’s all ice.
Scroll through to see all Top 10 Largest Deserts In the World :-
10. Great Basin National Park :-
Great Basin National Park is located in the Great Basin Desert, one of the four deserts of the United States and the largest of them. The Mohave, Chihuahuan, and Sonoran deserts are "hot" deserts, while the Great Basin Desert is the only "cold" desert in the country, where most rain falls in the form of snow. The Great Basin Desert exists because of the "rainshadow effect" generated by the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California. When winds from the Pacific Ocean climb to go over the Sierra, the air cools and loses most of its moisture as rain. By the time the winds cross over the mountains and sweep down the far side, they are very dry and absorb moisture from the surrounding area. This drying effect is responsible for creating the Great Basin Desert.
It covers a barren area of about 492,000 square km and is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west, the Wasatch Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau on the north, and the Mojave Desert on the south. The desert stretches a large part of the state of Nevada and expands into western Utah, eastern California, and Idaho. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The climate of the Great Basin desert is described by extremes: hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters; frigid alpine ridges and warm, windy valleys. The bristlecone pine, a type of tree in the Basin, is more than 4,000-years-old. It is home to the bighorn sheep, mule deer, mountain lions, bobcats, bald eagle, hear western meadowlarks or red-tailed hawks, and numerous other species of birds. Smaller mammals like the yellow-bellied marmot, pygmy rabbit, and sagebrush vole are found in the Great Basin Desert.
The Syrian Desert is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe. Jointly with the other deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Hamad Desert has been described as one of the aridest deserts of the world. It covers 500,000 km² of the Middle East, including parts of southeastern Syria, northeastern Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and western Iraq. It occupies 85% of the land area of Jordan and 55% of Syria. To the south, it borders and merges into the Arabian Desert. The land is open, rocky desert pavement, cut with occasional wadis.
Fetching on average less than 125 mm of rainfall annually. It is home to Storks, herons, cranes, small waders, waterfowl, and also raptors who visit the seasonal lakes. Snakes, scorpions and camel spiders, gazelle, wolf, jackal, fox, cat and caracal, also ostrich, cheetah, hartebeest and onager found in the desert.
8. Patagonian Desert :-
The Patagonian Desert is the largest in Argentina and is the 8th largest desert in the world by area, seizing 673,000 square kilometres. The Andes, to the desert's west, are the reason for the Patagonian desert status as they stop the westerly flow of moisture from the southern Pacific from reaching inland. These winds forfeit their humidity through cooling and condensation as they blow over the west coast of South America and the Andes, and they are dry when they arrive in Patagonia. This creates a rain shadow that accounts for the formation of the desert and that is why despite roughly half of the desert being only about 200 miles from the ocean, such a large desert is established in the region.
It is located in Argentina and is bordered by the Andes, to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, in the region of Patagonia, southern Argentina. The desert encompasses countries including Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands. The Patagonian Desert is a large cold winter desert, where the temperature barely surpasses 12 °C and averages just 3 °C. The region suffers about seven months of winter and five months of summer. Average annual precipitation varies between about 5 and 8 inches, though as much as 19 inches have been reported. The desert is home to burrowing owl, lesser rhea, guanaco, tuco-tuco, mara, pygmy armadillo, Patagonian weasel, puma, Patagonian grey fox, desert iguana, western ribbon snake, and various species of eagle and hawk.
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending for 900,000 km², enclosing much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. In the southwest, it integrates with Namib, the coastal desert of Namibia. It receives too much rainfall - between 5 and 10 inches yearly. However, any rain filters shortly through the vast expanses of sand, leaving nothing on the surface.
The temperatures in the Kalahari Desert are extreme, with summers being very hot while winter temperatures can reach below zero degrees Celsius at night. This is a result of the Kalahari’s relatively high altitude and predominantly clear, dry air. In summer, temperatures can attain 45 degrees Celsius on winter nights, can lower to minus 15 degrees Celsius. The Kalahari is home to many migrating birds and animals including large predators such as the lion, cheetah, leopard, spotted hyena, brown hyena, and African wild dog. Birds of prey include the secretary bird, martial eagle and other eagles, the giant eagle owl and other owls, falcons, goshawks, kestrels, and kites.
The Gobi Desert is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, occupying a 1,295,000 km² area. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world and the second-largest in Asia after the Arabian Desert. The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, created by the Tibetan Plateau blocking precipitation from the Indian Ocean from reaching the Gobi territory. It encompasses parts of Northern and Northeastern China and Southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bordered by the Altai Mountains to the north, by the Taklamakan Desert to the west, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest and by the North China Plain to the southeast.
Despite the severe conditions, these deserts are home to black-tailed gazelles, marbled polecats, wild Bactrian camels, Mongolian wild ass and sand plovers. They are frequently visited by snow leopards, Gobi bears, and wolves. The Gobi is overall a cold desert, with frost and occasionally snow happening on its dunes. An average of nearly 194 mm of rain falls annually in the Gobi. The average temperature during the winter reaches -21 degrees celsius. While in the summer, it achieves as high as 27 degrees Celsius at maximum.
The Arabian Desert is a vast desert wilderness in Western Asia. It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, with an area of 2,330,000 km². It is the fifth-largest desert in the world and the largest in Asia. At its centre is Ar-Rub al-Khali, one of the largest continual bodies of sand in the world. It extends from Yemen to the Persian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq. The Arabian Desert is an expansion of the Sahara Desert over the Arabian peninsula. The desert lies mostly in Saudi Arabia and encloses most of the country. It encompasses neighbouring portions of southern Iraq, southern Jordan, central Qatar, most of the Abu Dhabi emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), western Oman, and northeastern Yemen. The ecoregion also comprises most of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the adjacent Negev desert in southern Israel.
The Arabian Desert has a subtropical, hot desert climate, similar to the climate of the Sahara Desert; the world's largest hot desert. The climate is mainly hot and dry with a lot of sunshine throughout the year. The rainfall percentage is normally around 100 mm, and the driest areas can receive between 30 and 40 mm of annual rain. The Arabian Desert has 102 native species of mammals include the Arabian oryx, sand gazelle, mountain gazelle, Nubian ibex, Arabian wolf, striped hyaena, caracal, sand cat, red fox, and Cape hare. The ecoregion is home to 310 bird species.
The deserts of Australia cover 1,371,000 km² or 18% of the Australian mainland. Apart from Antarctica, Australia is the driest continent in the world. About 35% of the continent receives so limited rain, it is effectively desert. In total, 70 per cent of the mainland receives less than 500 millimetres of rain yearly, which classes it as arid, or semi-arid. The deserts in Australia are mainly distributed throughout the western plateau and interior lowlands of the country. These are Australia’s ten deserts are Great Victoria Desert covers 348,750sq.km, Great Sandy Desert covers 267,250sq.km, Tanami Desert covers 184,500sq.km, Simpson Desert covers 176,500sq.km, Gibson Desert covers 156,000sq.km, Little Sandy Desert covers 111,500sq.km, Strzelecki Desert covers 80,250sq.km, Sturt Stony Desert covers 29,750sq.km, Tirari Desert covers 15,250sq.km, Pedirka Desert covers 1250sq. km.
In summer temperatures rise throughout Australia’s deserts. On average, days gain above 35°C. At night, temperatures can stagnate and continue around 30°C, even they tend to lower within a 15-20°C range. Australian deserts average annual rainfall below 250mm. The rainfall is barely evenly distributed throughout the year. Australia is home to the largest intact desert on Earth, full of wildlife spectacularly developed in the extreme conditions of the desert. Australia’s deserts are home to a variety of endemic animals too, including reptiles, birds, mammals, frogs, and insects. They are home to bilbies, dunnarts, kangaroos, wallabies, bats, Dingos, huge diversity of birds and reptiles, and even some frogs, most found nowhere else on Earth.
The Sahara is a desert situated on the African continent. It is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, with an area of 9,200,000 km². But it is smaller than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic. Covering nearly all of northern Africa, it measures 4,800 km from east to west and between 1,800 km from north to south. The Sahara is bordered in the west by the Atlantic Ocean, in the north by the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, in the east by the Red Sea, and in the south by the Sahel. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.
Sahara desert is home to 500 species of plants, 70 known mammalian species, 90 avian species and 100 reptilian, plus several species of spiders, scorpions and other small arthropods. Variety of gazelles, addax, cheetahs, caracals, desert foxes and wild dogs found in Sahara desert.
The Arctic desert is a terrestrial ecoregion that encompasses the island groups of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Severny Island and Severnaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. It has an area of 161,400 km². The region is covered with glaciers, snow, and bare rock in a harshly cold environment. The temperature does increase above freezing for short periods in the summer, so some ice melt occurs. Arctic desert covers mainly parts of Norway and Russia. The ecoregion measures 2,000 km west-to-east, and 1,000 km north-to-south, across the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Russia. It covers the island groups of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Severny Island and Severnaya Zemlya.
This climate is long, cold winters and very short summers with at least one month averaging over 0 °C so that snow or ice might melt, but no month averages over 10 °C. The largest colonies of Ivory gull, Atlantic walrus, Polar bear, sea birds and mammals.
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere. At 14,200,000 km², it is the fifth-largest continent and nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness, which broadens to all but the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica, on normal, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Most of Antarctica is a polar desert, with annual precipitation of 200 mm along the coast and far less inland; yet 80% of the world freshwater reserves are stocked there.
Its landmass is almost entirely covered by a vast ice sheet. It is also the world’s highest, driest, windiest, coldest, and iciest continent. Antarctica has two seasons: summer and winter. Earth is leaned in space and the direction of tilt never changes. During summer, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted toward the sun. It is always sunny. In winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted away from the sun. Then, the continent is always dark. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals.
It covers a barren area of about 492,000 square km and is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west, the Wasatch Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau on the north, and the Mojave Desert on the south. The desert stretches a large part of the state of Nevada and expands into western Utah, eastern California, and Idaho. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The climate of the Great Basin desert is described by extremes: hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters; frigid alpine ridges and warm, windy valleys. The bristlecone pine, a type of tree in the Basin, is more than 4,000-years-old. It is home to the bighorn sheep, mule deer, mountain lions, bobcats, bald eagle, hear western meadowlarks or red-tailed hawks, and numerous other species of birds. Smaller mammals like the yellow-bellied marmot, pygmy rabbit, and sagebrush vole are found in the Great Basin Desert.
9. Syrian Desert :-
The Syrian Desert is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe. Jointly with the other deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Hamad Desert has been described as one of the aridest deserts of the world. It covers 500,000 km² of the Middle East, including parts of southeastern Syria, northeastern Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and western Iraq. It occupies 85% of the land area of Jordan and 55% of Syria. To the south, it borders and merges into the Arabian Desert. The land is open, rocky desert pavement, cut with occasional wadis.
Fetching on average less than 125 mm of rainfall annually. It is home to Storks, herons, cranes, small waders, waterfowl, and also raptors who visit the seasonal lakes. Snakes, scorpions and camel spiders, gazelle, wolf, jackal, fox, cat and caracal, also ostrich, cheetah, hartebeest and onager found in the desert.
8. Patagonian Desert :-
The Patagonian Desert is the largest in Argentina and is the 8th largest desert in the world by area, seizing 673,000 square kilometres. The Andes, to the desert's west, are the reason for the Patagonian desert status as they stop the westerly flow of moisture from the southern Pacific from reaching inland. These winds forfeit their humidity through cooling and condensation as they blow over the west coast of South America and the Andes, and they are dry when they arrive in Patagonia. This creates a rain shadow that accounts for the formation of the desert and that is why despite roughly half of the desert being only about 200 miles from the ocean, such a large desert is established in the region.
It is located in Argentina and is bordered by the Andes, to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, in the region of Patagonia, southern Argentina. The desert encompasses countries including Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands. The Patagonian Desert is a large cold winter desert, where the temperature barely surpasses 12 °C and averages just 3 °C. The region suffers about seven months of winter and five months of summer. Average annual precipitation varies between about 5 and 8 inches, though as much as 19 inches have been reported. The desert is home to burrowing owl, lesser rhea, guanaco, tuco-tuco, mara, pygmy armadillo, Patagonian weasel, puma, Patagonian grey fox, desert iguana, western ribbon snake, and various species of eagle and hawk.
7. Kalahari Desert :-
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending for 900,000 km², enclosing much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. In the southwest, it integrates with Namib, the coastal desert of Namibia. It receives too much rainfall - between 5 and 10 inches yearly. However, any rain filters shortly through the vast expanses of sand, leaving nothing on the surface.
The temperatures in the Kalahari Desert are extreme, with summers being very hot while winter temperatures can reach below zero degrees Celsius at night. This is a result of the Kalahari’s relatively high altitude and predominantly clear, dry air. In summer, temperatures can attain 45 degrees Celsius on winter nights, can lower to minus 15 degrees Celsius. The Kalahari is home to many migrating birds and animals including large predators such as the lion, cheetah, leopard, spotted hyena, brown hyena, and African wild dog. Birds of prey include the secretary bird, martial eagle and other eagles, the giant eagle owl and other owls, falcons, goshawks, kestrels, and kites.
6. Gobi Desert :-
The Gobi Desert is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, occupying a 1,295,000 km² area. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world and the second-largest in Asia after the Arabian Desert. The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, created by the Tibetan Plateau blocking precipitation from the Indian Ocean from reaching the Gobi territory. It encompasses parts of Northern and Northeastern China and Southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bordered by the Altai Mountains to the north, by the Taklamakan Desert to the west, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest and by the North China Plain to the southeast.
Despite the severe conditions, these deserts are home to black-tailed gazelles, marbled polecats, wild Bactrian camels, Mongolian wild ass and sand plovers. They are frequently visited by snow leopards, Gobi bears, and wolves. The Gobi is overall a cold desert, with frost and occasionally snow happening on its dunes. An average of nearly 194 mm of rain falls annually in the Gobi. The average temperature during the winter reaches -21 degrees celsius. While in the summer, it achieves as high as 27 degrees Celsius at maximum.
5. Arabian Desert :-
The Arabian Desert is a vast desert wilderness in Western Asia. It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, with an area of 2,330,000 km². It is the fifth-largest desert in the world and the largest in Asia. At its centre is Ar-Rub al-Khali, one of the largest continual bodies of sand in the world. It extends from Yemen to the Persian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq. The Arabian Desert is an expansion of the Sahara Desert over the Arabian peninsula. The desert lies mostly in Saudi Arabia and encloses most of the country. It encompasses neighbouring portions of southern Iraq, southern Jordan, central Qatar, most of the Abu Dhabi emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), western Oman, and northeastern Yemen. The ecoregion also comprises most of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the adjacent Negev desert in southern Israel.
The Arabian Desert has a subtropical, hot desert climate, similar to the climate of the Sahara Desert; the world's largest hot desert. The climate is mainly hot and dry with a lot of sunshine throughout the year. The rainfall percentage is normally around 100 mm, and the driest areas can receive between 30 and 40 mm of annual rain. The Arabian Desert has 102 native species of mammals include the Arabian oryx, sand gazelle, mountain gazelle, Nubian ibex, Arabian wolf, striped hyaena, caracal, sand cat, red fox, and Cape hare. The ecoregion is home to 310 bird species.
4. deserts of Australia :-
The deserts of Australia cover 1,371,000 km² or 18% of the Australian mainland. Apart from Antarctica, Australia is the driest continent in the world. About 35% of the continent receives so limited rain, it is effectively desert. In total, 70 per cent of the mainland receives less than 500 millimetres of rain yearly, which classes it as arid, or semi-arid. The deserts in Australia are mainly distributed throughout the western plateau and interior lowlands of the country. These are Australia’s ten deserts are Great Victoria Desert covers 348,750sq.km, Great Sandy Desert covers 267,250sq.km, Tanami Desert covers 184,500sq.km, Simpson Desert covers 176,500sq.km, Gibson Desert covers 156,000sq.km, Little Sandy Desert covers 111,500sq.km, Strzelecki Desert covers 80,250sq.km, Sturt Stony Desert covers 29,750sq.km, Tirari Desert covers 15,250sq.km, Pedirka Desert covers 1250sq. km.
In summer temperatures rise throughout Australia’s deserts. On average, days gain above 35°C. At night, temperatures can stagnate and continue around 30°C, even they tend to lower within a 15-20°C range. Australian deserts average annual rainfall below 250mm. The rainfall is barely evenly distributed throughout the year. Australia is home to the largest intact desert on Earth, full of wildlife spectacularly developed in the extreme conditions of the desert. Australia’s deserts are home to a variety of endemic animals too, including reptiles, birds, mammals, frogs, and insects. They are home to bilbies, dunnarts, kangaroos, wallabies, bats, Dingos, huge diversity of birds and reptiles, and even some frogs, most found nowhere else on Earth.
3. Sahara :-
The Sahara is a desert situated on the African continent. It is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, with an area of 9,200,000 km². But it is smaller than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic. Covering nearly all of northern Africa, it measures 4,800 km from east to west and between 1,800 km from north to south. The Sahara is bordered in the west by the Atlantic Ocean, in the north by the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, in the east by the Red Sea, and in the south by the Sahel. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.
Sahara desert is home to 500 species of plants, 70 known mammalian species, 90 avian species and 100 reptilian, plus several species of spiders, scorpions and other small arthropods. Variety of gazelles, addax, cheetahs, caracals, desert foxes and wild dogs found in Sahara desert.
2. Arctic desert :-
The Arctic desert is a terrestrial ecoregion that encompasses the island groups of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Severny Island and Severnaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. It has an area of 161,400 km². The region is covered with glaciers, snow, and bare rock in a harshly cold environment. The temperature does increase above freezing for short periods in the summer, so some ice melt occurs. Arctic desert covers mainly parts of Norway and Russia. The ecoregion measures 2,000 km west-to-east, and 1,000 km north-to-south, across the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Russia. It covers the island groups of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Severny Island and Severnaya Zemlya.
This climate is long, cold winters and very short summers with at least one month averaging over 0 °C so that snow or ice might melt, but no month averages over 10 °C. The largest colonies of Ivory gull, Atlantic walrus, Polar bear, sea birds and mammals.
1. Antarctica :-
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere. At 14,200,000 km², it is the fifth-largest continent and nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness, which broadens to all but the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica, on normal, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Most of Antarctica is a polar desert, with annual precipitation of 200 mm along the coast and far less inland; yet 80% of the world freshwater reserves are stocked there.
Its landmass is almost entirely covered by a vast ice sheet. It is also the world’s highest, driest, windiest, coldest, and iciest continent. Antarctica has two seasons: summer and winter. Earth is leaned in space and the direction of tilt never changes. During summer, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted toward the sun. It is always sunny. In winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted away from the sun. Then, the continent is always dark. Antarctic sea life includes penguins, blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals.
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