The largest deserts in the world

There are five major deserts in the world, namely:

The Arabian Desert:

The Arabian Desert is the second largest subtropical desert, located in the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East. When people talk about the Arabian Desert, they often mean several vast areas, including most of the Arabian Peninsula and extending to Jordan, Iraq and the northern region of the United Arab Republic, which are neighboring countries.

The total area of ​​the desert in the Arabian Peninsula is 1,300,000 square kilometers (about half a million square miles) divided into three regions, most of which are in Saudi Arabia.

Two of these deserts, the Syrian Desert and the Nafud Desert, are located in the northern part of the country. The third desert, the Rub' al-Khali or the Great Sand Desert, is located at the southern tip of the peninsula. The area of ​​the Empty Quarter is about a quarter of a million square miles of hot desert that is only penetrated by small tribes of nomads, and no one else knows the locations of the few wells and the roads leading to them.

The Sahara Desert:

The Sahara Desert is the largest semi-tropical desert in the world, as it is located in North Africa, and its area is 9.4 million km2, and is characterized by the presence of sand sheets, sand dunes, oases depressions, shallow basins, mountains, and plateaus. There are two rainy seasons in the north of the desert, a hot summer and a cold winter, while the southern desert is characterized by a dry tropical climate with a mild winter and a hot dry summer. Bedouins live in this desert, moving from one region to another in search of ideal living areas, and it contains the highest mountain peak, Mount Kosi, located in northern Chad.

Antarctica:

The Antarctic Desert is the largest desert in the world, with an area of ​​14 million km2. The Antarctic Desert holds the record for the coldest, windiest, and highest altitude. The average rainfall in the Antarctic Desert is less than 5.1 cm per year, as the rain that falls does not evaporate due to the cold, resulting in thick layers of ice that have developed over hundreds of thousands of years. The animals that live in the Antarctic Desert depend on the sea for food, including: penguins, seals, whales, and squid. The desert is extremely cold and harsh, so that no one can live in it permanently.

Arctic Desert:

The area of ​​the Arctic Desert is 13.7 million km2, and it is located in the far north of the world, and includes parts of: Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, and Canada, where temperatures reach -30°C in winter, and reach 0.56°C in summer, and the total amount of precipitation is less than 25 cm, which is mostly in the form of snow, the landscape is a mixture of wide plains, and dome-shaped glaciers, and among the types of birds that live on the sides of high slopes: Arctic tern, snow bunting, and ivory gulls, and large mammals also live in the cold Arctic temperatures, such as: polar bear, arctic fox, and walrus.

Gobi Desert:

The Gobi Desert covers most of southern Mongolia, covering an area of ​​about 1.3 million km2. It has gravel and rocky terrain, and temperatures can reach -40°C in winter, and 40°C in summer. The average rainfall is less than 10 cm per year, and in some areas it rains every two or three years. It is home to the Bactrian Camel, the only species remaining in the wild, in addition to a small number of bears.