largest deserts of the world

The Syrian Desert is described as an arid wasteland by Merriam Webster. Covering much of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, the region is marked by lava flows and was an impenetrable barrier to humans until recent decades. Now, highways and oil pipelines cross the region, which receives less than 5 inches (125 mm) of rain annually, on average.Humans were able to reach parts of it in ancient times, though. One area, now dubbed Syrias Stonehenge, was discovered in 2009. It includes stone circles and possibly, tombs, according to a 2012 Discovery News report.The Es Safa volcano field near Damascus is Arabias largest volcanic field. The vents found in that area were active about 12,000 years ago, during the Holocene Epoch. More recently, a boiling lava lake was spotted in the region around 1850.

Nestled around the South Pole, where the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded and which doesnt receive sunlight for months every year, its sometimes hard to think of icy Antarctica as a desert. But it is the worlds largest one because very little precipitation falls there on average, it gets less than 2 inches (50 millimeters) a year, mostly as snow.Despite the low snowfall, vast glaciers cover 99 percent of Antarcticas surface. Thats because the average temperature (minus 54 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 48 degrees Celsius) slows down evaporation to a crawl. Over long periods of time, the snowfall accumulates at a rate faster than Antarcticas ablation, according to Discovering Antarctica, a project of the U.K.s Royal Geographical Society.

Parts of Antarctica are showing strong signs of warming up along with global climate change, however. Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) over the past 50 years five times the rate of the rest of the planet. And scientists think that warm ocean waters could be melting Antarcticas glaciers as they flow under the floating tongues of ice.

The Mojave Desert is a desert that occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona in the United States. The term Mojave originates from the Spanish language while the spelling Mohave comes from modern English. Both are used today, although the Native American Tribe officially uses the spelling Mojave; the word is a shortened form of Hamakhaave, their endonym in their native language, which means beside the water.The Mojave Desert displays typical basin and range topography. Higher elevations above 2,000 feet (610 m) in the Mojave are commonly referred to as the High Desert; however, Death Valley is the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level and is one of the Mojave Deserts more notorious places.

The Mojave Deserts boundaries are generally defined by the presence of Yucca brevifolia (Joshua trees), considered an indicator species for this desert. The topographical boundaries include the Tehachapi together with the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges. The mountain boundaries are quite distinct since they are outlined by the two largest faults in California, the San Andreas and Garlock faults. The Great Basin shrub steppe lies to the north, and the warmer Sonoran Desert (the Low Desert) lies to the south and east. The desert is believed to support between 1,750 and 2,000 species of plants.

The Namib is a coastal desert in southern Africa. The name Namib is of Nama origin and means vast place. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba River in Angola, through Namibia and to the Olifants River in Western Cape, South Africa.The Namibs northernmost portion, which extends 450 kilometres (280 mi) from the Angola Namibia border, is known as Mo

Dasht e Kavir also known as Kavir e Namak and the Great Salt Desert is a large desert lying in the middle of the Iranian plateau. It is about 800 km (500 mi) and 320 km (200 mi) with a total surface area of about 77,600 km2 (30,000 sq mi), making it the Earths 23rd largest desert.The area of this desert stretches from the Alborz mountain range in the north west to the Dasht e Lut in the south east and is partitioned between the Iranian provinces of Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd.

Iran is climatically part of the Afro Asian belt of deserts, which stretches from the Cape Verde islands off West Africa all the way to Mongolia near Beijing, China. The patchy, elongated, light colored feature in the foreground (parallel to the mountain range) is the northernmost of the Dasht dry lakes that stretch southward 300 kilometers (190 mi). In near tropical deserts, elevated areas capture most precipitation. As a result, the desert is largely an abiotic zone.

Irans geography consists of a plateau surrounded by mountains and divided into drainage basins. Dasht e Lut is one of the largest of these desert basins, 480 kilometers (300 mi) long and 320 kilometers (200 mi) wide, and is considered to be one of the driest places on Earth.Area of the desert is about 51,800 square kilometres (20,000 sq mi). The other large basin is the Dasht e Kavir. During the spring wet season, water briefly flows down from the Kerman mountains, but it soon dries up, leaving behind only rocks, sand, and salt.

The eastern part of Dasht e Lut is a low plateau covered with salt flats. In contrast, the center has been sculpted by the wind into a series of parallel ridges and furrows, extending over 150 km (93 mi) and reaching 75 metres (246 ft) in height. This area is also riddled with ravines and sinkholes. The southeast is a vast expanse of sand, like a Saharan erg, with dunes 300 metres (980 ft) high, among the tallest in the world.

The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama) is a plateau in South America, covering a 1,000 kilometre (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is the driest non polar desert in the world. According to estimates the Atacama Desert proper occupies 105,000 square kilometres (41,000 sq mi), but its size rises to 128,000 square kilometres (49,000 sq mi) when the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included. Most of the desert is composed of stony terrain, salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava that flows towards the Andes.

The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia.It is the fourth largest Australian desert, with an area of 176,500 km? (68,100 sq mi) and is the worlds largest sand dune desert.The desert is underlain by the Great Artesian Basin, one of the largest inland drainage areas in the world. Water from the basin rises to the surface at numerous natural springs, including Dalhousie Springs, and at bores drilled along stock routes, or during petroleum exploration. As a result of exploitation by such bores, the flow of water to springs has been steadily decreasing in recent years. It is also part of the Lake Eyre basin.The Simpson Desert is an erg which contains the worlds longest parallel sand dunes. These north south oriented dunes are static, held in position by vegetation. They vary in height from 3 metres in the west to around 30 metres on the eastern side. The largest dune, Nappanerica, is 40 metres in height.

The Thar Desert is a large, arid region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and forms a natural boundary running along the border between India and Pakistan. With an area of more than 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi), within the Indian state of Rajasthan, covering the districts of Jaisalmer, Barmer, Bikaner and Jodhpur, and some region of the states of Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat.it is the worlds 9th largest subtropical desert.

Thar Desert extends from the Sutlej River, surrounded by the [Aravalli Range]s on the east, on the south by the salt marsh known as the Great Rann of Kutch (parts of which are sometimes included in the Thar), and on the west by the Indus River. Its boundary to the large thorny steppe to the north is ill defined. It lies mostly in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and extends into the southern portion of Haryana and Punjab states and into northern Gujarat state.

The Gibson Desert, an interim Australian bioregion, covers a large dry area in the state of Western Australia and is still largely in an almost pristine state. It is about 155,000 square kilometres (60,000