Facts about Desert

The largest desert

The world’s largest desert is Antarctica. The world’s largest cold desert is Antarctica. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F). There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there. Antarctica is home to more than 70 lakes that lie at the base of the continental ice sheet. Lake Vostok, discovered beneath Russia's Vostok Station in 1996, is the largest of these sub glacial lakes. It was once believed that the lake had been sealed off for 500,000 to one million years but a recent survey suggests that, every so often, there are large flows of water from one lake to another.

Blue ice covering lake in Antartica

The largest hot desert

Sahara in Africa is the second largest but it’s the world’s largest hot desert is Sahara desert in Africa. The total area covered by Sahara is 9,400,000 km2. The highest temperature is as strong as 58 deg. It was considered to be larger than this in ancient period. The sand dunes formed in Sahara may go up to 180 m and as strange it may sound, it is covered by snow during winters. 

The largest Oasis

Oasis is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert. Oases are formed from underground rivers or aquifers such as an artesian aquifer, where water can reach the surface naturally by pressure or by man-made wells. Nile River valley and delta, Egypt, is claimed as the world's biggest oasis by the 2007 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records with a stated area of 22,000 square kilometers.

Optical illusion in desert

Mirages are optical phenomena caused by the refraction of light through heated air rising from a sandy or stony surface. They occur in the interior of the desert about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the coast. They make objects that are 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) or more away appear to move. This mirage effect makes it difficult for you to identify an object from a distance. It also blurs distant range contours so much that you feel surrounded by a sheet of water from which elevations stand out as "islands." Mirages make navigation in desert difficult.

People in desert Sahara

The largest group of people who inhabited the Sahara Desert is called Tauregs. The Tuareg are a pastoral people, having an economy based on livestock breeding, trading, and agriculture.

Desert Culture

Desert Cultural Center, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India is a very popular tourist place of India. The traditional folk music and dance is an integral part of the social and cultural life of the indigenous inhabitants of Jaisalmer. The Kalbeliya dance of the community of snake charmers portrays the rich artistic caliber and creative imagination of the dancers. The Desert Festival of Jaisalmer provides the local inhabitants and the tourists as well to explore the unique folk traditions of the ancient times. The Desert Festival is unique to Jaisalmer that displays the rich performing arts and unique craft works of the place.

Formation of desert

Deserts landscapes are more diverse than many expect. Some are found on a flat shield of ancient crystalline rocks hardened over many millions of years, yielding flat deserts of rock and sand such as the Sahara. Others are the folded product of more recent tectonic movements, and have evolved into crumpled landscapes of Rocky Mountains emerging from lowland sedimentary plains, as in Central Asia or North America.

Dust storms

Saharan dust storms are largely responsible for the significant difference between the numbers of cyanobacteria in the North and South Atlantic. The dust fertilizes the North Atlantic and allows phytoplankton to use organic phosphorus, but it doesn’t reach the southern regions and so without enough iron, phytoplankton are unable to use the organic material and don’t grow as successfully.

Dust Storm in Sahara

Desert in diverse

The Mojave Desert in USA is so diverse that it is subdivided into five regions: northern, south-western, central, south-central, and eastern. Elevations range from below sea level at Death Valley National Park to 2.26 miles on Mt. Charleston in the Spring Range of Nevada.