How Many Deserts in the World

Introduction

Deserts are some of the most stunning landscapes in the world. Although the dry land is frequently uninhabited, it is strikingly beautiful. There are 23 deserts in the world. Deserts can be hot or cold, and cover almost one-third of the Earth’s surface area. There are many important and famous deserts around the world. If you are lucky enough to visit them all you will be exposed to the most varied landscapes and their vast beauty.

Now, let’s discuss about some of the famous deserts:

Antarctic Desert is: Largest Desert on Earth

Only a few small groups of scientific researchers live in the vast, icy expanse of Antarctica, which is thought to be the world's largest desert. Its total area is 13.8 million square kilometres, and its interior can experience annual precipitation as low as 51 mm.

Animal Habitat:

Penguins, whales, seals, albatrosses, and other seabirds are the most common animals on the Antarctic continent.

Arctic Desert: A Terrestrial Ecoregion

Parts of Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States are covered by this vast cold desert. It is particularly vulnerable to climate change and is renowned for its strong winds and below-freezing temperatures. It is one of the world's largest deserts and spans an area of 161,400 square kilometres. It is a harshly cold place with glaciers, snow, and bare rock.

Animal Habitat:

The region is also home to the largest colonies of Ivory gull, Atlantic walrus, Polar bear, Arctic wolf, whale, and Arctic hare.

The Sahara Desert: The World's Largest Desert

The Sahara desert, which spans a sizable portion of Northern Africa, is the world's largest hot desert and is almost as big as the United States. It is renowned for being extremely hot during the day and extremely cold at night and spans 13 countries. The size of this African desert is 9,200,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat:

Tropical catfish, chromites, cobras, pygmy crocodiles, gerbils, jerboas, Cape hares, and desert hedgehogs can all be found in this area of the world.

Arabian Desert: Largest Desert in Asia

The Arabian desert, which is found in Western Asia, encircles Yemen, the Persian Gulf, Oman, Jordan, and Iraq. The largest continuous sand stretch in the world, Rub 'al-Khali or the "Empty Quarter," is located in the middle of it. The Arabian Desert, which is the largest desert in Asia, has a surface area of 2,330,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat:

The Arabian desert is home to the Nubian ibex, Hamadryas baboon, mountain gazelle, sand cat, and Arabian leopard.

Gobi Desert: Largest Dinosaur Fossil Reservoir in The World

The Gobi Desert is found in northwest China and southern Mongolia and is located in the dry, rain-free Himalayan foothills. It is one of Asia's largest deserts and the location of numerous historic cities along the Silk Road as well as a significant number of fossils. This 1,295,000 square kilometre desert in east Asia is regarded as the world's largest repository of dinosaur fossils.

Animal Habitat:

The Gobi Desert is home to a variety of animals, including the snow leopard, black-tailed gazelle, Gobi viper, jerboa, Gobi bear, Gobi ibex, and wild Bactrian camel.

Kalahari Desert: Home to Several Game Reserves

Parts of Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa are covered by the semi-arid savannah of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. It is renowned for its sagebrush and desert plants as well as for having only one permanent river, the Okavango. This vast, basin-like plain of Southern Africa's interior plateau covers an area of 900,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat

The black-maned lion, leopard, and other critically endangered African species can be found in the Kalahari Desert. Wild dog, gemsbok, blue and red wildebeests, zebra, kudu, lion, leopard, and cheetah.

Great Victoria Desert: Largest Desert in Australia

The Great Victoria Desert, located in Australia's southwest and south, is the biggest in the world. It is renowned for its many thunderstorms, grassland plains, salt lakes, and sand hills. Great Victoria Desert, an ecoregion with a low population density, spans an area of 422,466 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat

Rock wallabies, parrots, snakes, camels, and bilbies can all be found in this area.

Patagonian Desert: Largest Desert in Argentina

The Patagonian Desert, one of South America's largest deserts, is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Andes Mountains to the west. It includes regions in Chile and Argentina. The Patagonian desert, also called the Patagonian Steppe, covers an area of 673,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat

The burrowing owl, tuco-tuco, mara, pygmy armadillo, Patagonian weasel, puma, Patagonian grey fox, desert iguana, western ribbon snake, and various species of eagle and hawk can all be found here in the Patagonia desert.

Namib Desert: The World’s Oldest Deserts

The Namib Desert, the world's oldest desert, can be found in southern Africa's coast countries of Namibia, Angola, and South Africa. It is home to many fascinating animals and dunes. This coastal desert, which stretches for 1200 miles (1900 km), is one of the oldest deserts in the world and covers 81,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat:

Baboons, leopards, cheetahs, brown and spotted hyenas, klipspringers, springboks, steenboks, Cape and bat-eared foxes, Hartmann's zebras, as well as wild desert horses, can all be found in the Namib desert.

The Thar Desert: One of The Most Fragile Ecosystems of India

When compared to the other deserts on this list, the Thar Desert in northwest India is not particularly dry or large, but it is renowned for its vibrant culture. Majestic forts and palaces can be found all over the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab. Thar desert, which has another name for the Great Indian Desert, has an area of 200,000 square kilometres.

Animal Habitat:

The Great Thar Desert is home to a wide variety of reptile species, as well as scorpions, mongooses, red foxes, chinkaras, falcons, Indian bustards, blackbuck, and a few different kinds of wild cats.

Notes :

• The majority of experts concur that a desert is any region of land with annual precipitation totals of less than 25 centimetres (10 inches). In a desert, evaporation frequently far outweighs annual precipitation. Water is scarce for plants and other living things in all deserts.

• Large temperature differences between day and night put stress on the rocks, causing them to fracture in pieces, which is how deserts are formed. Although deserts rarely experience rain, there are sporadic downpours that can cause flash floods.

• The Antarctic Desert, which is the world's largest desert and is found on the continent of Antarctica in the southern hemisphere, has already been mentioned. It covers 14,000,000 kilometres (5,500,000 square miles).

• In hot and dry deserts, the summers are typically very hot and the rest of the year is warm. These deserts receive little rain in the winter. Rainfall is frequently light or comes in brief, intense bursts. Evaporation rates are typically higher than rainfall rates.

• Deserts have low humidity, which makes it difficult for the air to absorb the heat that the sand radiates while it is heated by the sun during the day. As a result, deserts experience a sharp drop in temperature at night.