The largest desert - desert in the world (2)

The desert often refers to sandy deserts, sometimes used to refer to the desert in general. The desert often has a large amount of solar radiation, a lot of sand and hot winds are always blowing strongly, creating a lot of sandstorms, now about 1/3 of the Earth (continental) area is desert. People often use camels as a means of transport in the desert. Here we will continue with part 1 with the largest deserts in the world.

The largest desert - desert in the world (1)

5. Kalahari Desert

Ranked fifth on that list is a desert of up to 930,000 square kilometers (360,000 square miles). Kalahari Desert covers a large area of ​​South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. According to Kalahari's 1991 book about environmental studies, the average rainfall in this desert is less than 500mm a year. However, some places only receive 200mm of rain water every year.

Kalahari is described as "nothing special" . It is covered by sand, which may have been formed from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, due to the strong activity of wind and rain. The Kalahari Desert is also home to many human activities many thousands of years ago.

In an excavation area - the Wonderwerk cave in South Africa - archaeologists found evidence that the fire had burned here about 1 million years ago. They also discovered artifacts in the Tsodilo, Botswana hills, suggesting that this place once performed sacrifices about 70,000 years ago.

4. Gobi Desert

Gobi Desert is one of the most famous deserts. The area of ​​this desert is about 1.3 million square kilometers (800,000 square miles). The Gobi covers a large area of ​​China and Mongolia. However, not anywhere on the Gobi is dry. Some places in the desert also have the weather form divided into two distinct rainy and dry seasons. The average annual rainfall ranges from 50 to 200mm depending on the location. The eastern area has a lot of rain in the summer, the monsoon activity is also stronger.

In 2011, models with zigzag shapes in Gobi appeared in photos taken by Google, creating a series of hypotheses, even ones related to aliens. But according to researcher Jonathon Hill at Arizona State University, these tracks are primarily to help China's spy satellites navigate the spacecraft.

Gobi Desert is the ideal place to excavate dinosaur fossils. A Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur skeleton was excavated in the area and auctioned for $ 1 million.

3. Arabian desert

The area of ​​the Arabian desert is 2.3 million square kilometers (about 900,000 square miles). The Arabian desert covered Saudi Arabia, Oman and part of Iraq. Depending on the location, the desert dryness varies. In the center of the desert temperatures can reach 54 degrees Celsius. Areas near the desert edge or on plateaus are wetter, sometimes with fog and mist.

The average annual rainfall here is less than 100 mm, but depending on the location, it can range from 0 to 500 mm. Thanks to human irrigation, many parts of the desert have been greened. This is a good sign in the fact that the earth is deserted more and more.

However there are issues that need to be considered. The cultivation of circular trees became popular in Saudi Arabia in the past three decades. The engineers dug deep into the 20,000-year-old groundwater circuit to get irrigation water. It is expected that if current water usage continues, water will run out in the next 50 years.

2. Sahara Desert

The Sahara Desert covers an area of ​​8.6 million square kilometers, a figure larger than the above 8 desert areas combined. In addition to being larger than other deserts, the rainfall here is also much less. Annual precipitation is below 25mm, in the eastern desert, annual rainfall can be reduced to only 5mm. Water does not usually fall directly to rain in the Sahara but often creates fog. In the Sahara there is not much vegetation to retain heat after the Sun goes down, so the temperature can become very cold in the evening. The sudden change in temperature between day and night creates fog.

The Sahara also has a high volcano called Emi Koussi located in Chad, southeast of the Tibesti range. It lies at 3,415 meters above sea level, volcanic lava flows are still "young", about 2 million years old. Under normal notion, we always consider the Sahara as the largest desert in the world, but not really and we will discover that in the first place.

1. Antarctica

Yes, the world's largest desert is our Antarctic with an area of ​​14.2 million square kilometers (about 5.5 million square miles).

Antarctica is the coldest place in the world, many months do not receive the sun. It does not have the characteristics of normal desert such as hot, sandstorm ., the average annual rainfall of Antarctica is only 50mm and exists mainly in the form of snow. The reason for having so little snow but 99% of Antarctica's surface is covered by glaciers is because the average temperature at Antarctica is minus 48 degrees Celsius. And it slows down the evaporation process.

Due to climate change and global warming, many parts of Antarctica are showing signs of warming. The temperature in the past 50 years in Antarctica has increased 2.5 times - 5 times more than the rest of the whole earth. If seawater warms up, Antarctic ice will melt from below - places exposed to seawater.