97 Fun Facts About Deserts

Which of these is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara Desert, located in North Africa, is the largest hot desert globally, covering an area comparable to the United States.

Which non-polar desert is widely considered the driest on Earth?

The Atacama Desert in South America receives extremely little rainfall, with some areas experiencing virtually no recorded precipitation, making it the driest non-polar desert.

Asia's Gobi Desert is classed as which type of desert?

Sitting on a plateau 910–1,520 m up and far to the north, the Gobi sees frost and even snow on its dunes, with winter lows around −21 °C against summer highs near 27 °C.

Which feature helps desert animals shed excess heat?

The fennec fox's oversized ears do double duty: they shed excess heat and pick up the sounds of prey moving underground.

What is the general term for plants that store water in thickened, fleshy stems, leaves or roots?

Succulents keep thickened, fleshy parts as water stores, which is why they thrive in arid climates.

What phenomenon often creates deserts on the leeward side of mountain ranges?

Rain shadow effect: air descending the leeward slope is compressed and warmed, so it holds its moisture; the Great Basin Desert sits in the Sierra Nevada's shadow.

What do you call a fertile, watered pocket in the middle of a desert?

An oasis's signature plant is the date palm, which forms the canopy under which other crops are grown.

Which of the following best describes the process of desertification?

The expansion of existing desert areas into formerly fertile land, driven by drought and land misuse; the UN Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted in 1994 to fight it.

Which two deserts are larger than the Sahara?

Antarctica and the Arctic count as deserts because so little precipitation falls; at 9.2 million square kilometres the Sahara still covers most of North Africa.

What is the dark reddish-brown to black coating on exposed desert rocks called?

Desert varnish is a distinctive coating of iron and manganese oxides, along with clay minerals, that forms slowly on stable rock surfaces in deserts.

In which desert does the giant saguaro cactus grow wild?

Sonoran Desert: wild saguaros grow only in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora and a sliver of south-eastern California; the Tohono O'odham turn the red fruit into syrup.

What single measure decides whether a place counts as a desert?

Very low annual precipitation is the test, not heat: polar regions under permanent ice qualify as deserts, while many hot, humid tropical lowlands do not.

What is the main advantage of nocturnal activity for desert animals?

To avoid heat and so conserve water: even lions, active day and night, prefer to hunt after dark partly to conserve water.

Which of these deserts is located in South America?

Bounded by the Andes to the west and the Atlantic to the east, the Patagonian Desert is Argentina's largest and the eighth-largest in the world.

The formation of 'desert pavement' is primarily a result of what process?

Wind erosion (deflation) blows away the fine sand and silt, leaving a lag of close-packed stones; the surface is called reg in the western Sahara, serir in the east and gibber in Australia.

Every 20,000 years or so the Sahara flips between desert and what, due to Earth's wobble?

Savanna grassland: precession shifts where the North African monsoon falls, so a 'Green Sahara' of grass, lakes and hippos returns on a roughly 20,000-year cycle.

Which desert is known for holding the record for the highest air temperature ever recorded on Earth?

Death Valley in California, USA, holds the record for the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth, reaching 134°F (56.7°C) in July 1913.

How does the kangaroo rat get by in the desert without ever needing to drink?

Metabolic water from seeds plus concentrated urine: its kidneys express aquaporin 1 along an unusually long loop of Henle, so almost nothing is lost.

Which of these deserts is found in Southern Africa?

The Namib Desert is a large arid region in Southern Africa, stretching along the Atlantic coasts of Namibia, Angola, and South Africa.

Which crescent-shaped sand formation has 'horns' pointing downwind?

The steep downwind slip face sits at the sand's angle of repose, about 30–35 degrees, and collisions between barchans spawn new ones from their horns.

Which desert's Kelso Dunes are famous for their booming 'singing' sand?

Mojave Desert: the Kelso Dunes in California's Mojave National Preserve rise about 200 m and give off a low booming hum when dry sand avalanches down their slip faces.

Desert plants that complete their whole life cycle in a brief spell after rain are called what?

Ephemerals turn normally bare Namaqualand in South Africa into a carpet of flowers during its brief spring wet season.

What are dry desert lakebeds that temporarily fill with water after rain called?

Playas are dry desert lakebeds that flood briefly after rain; the word is Spanish for 'beach', and Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat, is the extreme example.

Which continent holds the largest area of hot desert?

Africa: the Sahara alone covers about 9.2 million square kilometres, and with the Kalahari and Namib the continent holds far more hot desert than Asia or Australia.

Extremely low temperatures and permanent ice cover characterise which desert type?

Polar regions get little enough precipitation to count as deserts but are set apart from hot and cold deserts by their very low temperatures and evapotranspiration.

What is a 'wadi' in a desert environment?

Sudden heavy rain turns wadis into flash-flood channels, and deposition is rapid because the water quickly loses speed and seeps into the porous bed.

What is the primary method by which desert plants like cacti reduce water loss?

Waxy cuticles and spines in place of leaves: spines are modified leaves that also trap still air near the stem and cast a little shade.

The Great Basin Desert, characterized by cold winters and sagebrush, is located in which continent?

North America: the Great Basin Desert lies between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, a high cold desert whose sagebrush valleys give way to pinyon-juniper woodland higher up.

What Arabic-derived term names a barren, rocky desert plateau stripped of sand?

Hamada is the Arabic term for a hard, barren rocky plateau where wind has carried off the sand; Morocco's Hamada du Draa and Libya's Al Hamadah al Hamra are examples.

Which desert is often referred to as the 'Empty Quarter' due to its vast, uninhabited sand dunes?

It covers some 650,000 square kilometres across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen, and Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, reaches into its northern edge.

What is a common adaptation for desert animals to escape the most extreme daytime temperatures?

Living in underground burrows, where it is cooler and more humid, is the common escape from the day's heat; many desert animals are also nocturnal.

What is the highest ground temperature satellites have measured in Iran's Lut Desert?

80.8°C (177.4°F), derived from MODIS satellite data in a 2021 study that found the same peak in Mexico's Sonoran Desert; Earth's hottest air temperature, 56.7°C at Death Valley, is far lower.

What wind-carved ridges run parallel to the prevailing wind where softer rock has been abraded away?

A yardang presents a steep, blunt face to the wind and tapers lower and narrower toward its lee end.

Cacti open their stomata to take in CO2 mainly at what time of day, sharply cutting water loss?

After dark, via crassulacean acid metabolism: CO2 is stored overnight and used once the sun is up, separating gas exchange from photosynthesis.

The Thar Desert is primarily located in which two countries?

India and Pakistan: roughly 85 per cent of the Thar Desert lies in north-western India, with the remainder in Pakistan's Sindh and Punjab provinces, west of the Aravalli Hills.

How much rain does a desert biome get in a typical year?

Desert biomes are characterized by receiving very little rainfall, typically less than 250 millimeters (10 inches) per year.

Which of these is a major cause of desertification?

Overgrazing by livestock and deforestation remove protective vegetation, leading to soil erosion and degradation, which are major contributors to desertification.

The Danakil Depression, one of the hottest places on Earth, is found in which region?

Horn of Africa: the Danakil Depression straddles Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti in the Afar Triangle, dipping about 125 m below sea level; Dallol there recorded the highest average annual temperature, 34.4°C.

What is the primary reason for the large temperature difference between day and night in many deserts?

With clear skies and dry air, heat radiates away after sunset and the day-night swing can reach 22 °C or more.

Which desert runs from Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields to the Gawler Ranges?

The Great Victoria Desert, Australia's largest, is over 700 km wide and mixes sandhills, grassland, gibber plains and salt lakes.

What are 'inselbergs' in a desert landscape?

Inselbergs are isolated hills rising abruptly from a plain; the German word means 'island mountain', Uluru in Australia is the textbook example and monadnock is the American synonym.

What is the main purpose of the wide, shallow root systems of many desert plants?

To quickly capture widely dispersed rainfall: a saguaro just 12 cm tall was found with roots 2 m across but no more than 10 cm deep.

Which of these deserts is located in Central Asia?

The Kara-Kum Desert lies in Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, between the Amu Darya river and the Kopet Dag mountains, and is crossed by the 1,375 km Karakum Canal.

What is the scientific term for plants that are adapted to live in extremely dry conditions?

Xerophytes are species of plants that have adapted to survive in environments with little liquid water, such as deserts or ice- or snow-covered regions.

Wadi Rum, the 'Valley of the Moon' seen in Lawrence of Arabia, is in which country?

At 720 square kilometres it is Jordan's largest wadi, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011, and has since doubled for Mars and Arrakis on screen.

What causes the phenomenon of a 'mirage' in deserts?

Mirages are optical phenomena caused by the refraction of light through layers of air with different temperatures and densities, commonly seen in hot deserts.

The Atacama Desert is unique for its extreme aridity and significant deposits of what mineral?

Nitrates: the Atacama's 'white gold' saltpetre (sodium nitrate) fields helped trigger the 1879 War of the Pacific, and the same soils hold perchlorates that make the desert a stand-in for Mars.

What do geologists call the sandblasting of rock by wind-blown sand?

Abrasion's partner is deflation, the wind simply lifting away loose fine grains; together they do the desert's carving.

What do meteorologists call the towering wall of dust a thunderstorm's outflow drives across a desert?

A haboob is the dense dust wall pushed out ahead of a collapsing thunderstorm's downdraft; the name comes from Sudan, and Phoenix, Arizona sees several during each summer monsoon.

Southwest Africa's bizarre Welwitschia plant grows how many leaves in its whole life?

The pair of strap-like leaves keeps growing for the plant's entire life, which may reach 2,000 years, fraying into a tangled heap.

How does the fog-basking beetle of southwest Africa's dunes get a drink?

On foggy nights the beetle climbs a dune crest and does a headstand, letting droplets collect on its body and trickle down to its mouth.

China's Taklamakan Desert fills which great inland basin?

Tarim Basin: the Taklamakan fills its floor, hemmed in by the Kunlun, Pamir and Tian Shan ranges, with the Tarim River skirting the desert's northern edge.

What happened at Lop Nur, a dried salt lake in Xinjiang, on 16 October 1964?

China's first nuclear bomb test, codenamed Project 596, was a 22-kiloton fission device fired from a tower at the Lop Nur base established in 1959.

Australia's Simpson Desert holds which world record?

Its biggest dune, Nappanerica or Big Red, is only about 40 m high, but the dunes run in straight lines for enormous distances.

Uluru rises how far above the surrounding plain?

348 m: Uluru rises 348 m above the plain and 863 m above sea level; most of its bulk lies underground and its red colour comes from iron oxide in the arkose sandstone.

What moves the 'sailing stones' that leave trails across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley?

Thin ice sheets nudged by light winds: in 2014 researchers watched rocks frozen into ice panels glide in winds of just 4–5 m/s.

New Mexico's brilliant White Sands dunes are made of which mineral?

Gypsum: rain and snowmelt dissolve it from the surrounding mountains and carry it into the Tularosa Basin, where Lake Lucero dries out and the crystals weather into white sand.

The tallest sand dunes in North America, up to 750 feet, are in which US state?

Colorado: Great Sand Dunes National Park piles sand against the Sangre de Cristo Range in the San Luis Valley, with Star Dune reaching about 750 feet.

Which is the largest hot desert in North America, straddling the US–Mexico border?

The Chihuahuan covers about 500,000 km², mostly in Mexico, with Ciudad Juárez and El Paso its biggest cities.

Who is traditionally said to have named the Mojave's Joshua tree?

Mormon colonists crossing the Mojave in the mid-1800s are said to have seen Joshua lifting his hands in prayer in the upraised branches, though no contemporary record of the story exists.

The ALMA radio telescope sits on the Atacama's Chajnantor plateau at about what altitude?

About 5,000 m: ALMA's 66 antennas stand at 5,058 m on the Chajnantor plateau, where the air is so thin that the antenna transporters carry oxygen for their drivers.

In 2010, 33 miners trapped in the Atacama's San José mine were rescued after how many days?

69 days: trapped on 5 August 2010, the 33 were hauled up on 13 October; seventeen days in, a note taped to a drill bit read 'We are well in the Refuge – the 33.'

The Nazca Lines of southern Peru were created over roughly which span?

Roughly 500 BC to AD 500: the figures were made by scraping away reddish, iron-coated pebbles to expose the pale ground beneath; the hummingbird alone is 93 m long.

The Richat Structure, the 40 km 'Eye of the Sahara' seen from space, is in which country?

Mauritania: the Richat Structure lies near the oasis town of Ouadane in the Adrar region, its concentric rings so prominent that astronauts used it as a landmark.

Dust from the Sahara's Bodélé Depression is credited with fertilising which distant ecosystem?

Amazon rainforest: the dust is fossil diatoms from the bed of a prehistoric mega-lake, blown across the Atlantic on about 100 days a year and delivering phosphorus to the basin's nutrient-poor soils.

Tassili n'Ajjer, the Saharan plateau famed for prehistoric rock art, is in which country?

Algeria: Tassili n'Ajjer, a UNESCO site since 1982 in the country's far south-east near the Libyan border, holds some 15,000 prehistoric engravings and paintings of cattle, giraffes and crocodiles.

Which Saharan animal is the smallest of all fox species?

Fennec fox: weighing only about 1–1.5 kg, it is the smallest canid; its enormous ears shed heat and pick up prey moving beneath the Sahara's sand.

The Gila monster of the Sonoran Desert is the only US-native what?

Venomous lizard: the Gila monster's venom comes from glands in its lower jaw, yet it is too sluggish to threaten people; in 1952 Arizona made it the first venomous animal in North America to receive legal protection.

How does Australia's thorny devil lizard take a drink?

Touch any part of its body to water and capillary action carries the moisture through channels between its scales.

Which small rattlesnake of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts has horn-like scales above its eyes?

Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes): its raised supraocular 'horns' shade the eyes, and its looping sideways gait lets it climb loose sand without slipping, a motion copied by snake robots.

Mongolia's Flaming Cliffs, a Velociraptor fossil site, were named by which 1920s explorer?

Roy Chapman Andrews, leading the American Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic Expeditions, named the cliffs in 1922; locals call the site Bayanzag, 'rich in saxaul'.

Israel's Ramon Crater in the Negev, 40 km long and 500 m deep, was formed how?

By erosion of a collapsed dome: Makhtesh Ramon is not an impact crater but the world's largest erosion cirque, hollowed out after water breached the hard cap of an uplifted dome and stripped its soft interior.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near Qumran in which desert?

Judaean Desert: Qumran sits on its eastern edge above the north-western end of the Dead Sea, where a Bedouin boy hunting for a lost animal stumbled on the first cave in late 1946 or early 1947.

The 'Door to Hell' gas crater, lit in 1971, is in which country's Karakum Desert?

Turkmenistan: Soviet engineers reportedly set the Darvaza crater alight in 1971 expecting it to burn out within days; in 2022 President Berdimuhamedow ordered it extinguished.

What does the name of Central Asia's Kyzylkum Desert mean?

Red Sand: kyzyl means 'red' and kum 'sand' in Turkic languages; the desert's Cretaceous rocks have yielded a string of early bird and dinosaur fossils.

The world's youngest desert, formed on a dried seabed since 1960, lies in which two countries?

Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: the Aralkum appeared as Soviet irrigation schemes starved the Aral Sea of its inflow; Kazakhstan's Kok-Aral Dam, finished in 2005, revived only the small northern lobe.

The Tabernas Desert, often called Europe's only true desert, is in which country?

Spain: the Tabernas Desert lies in Almería province in Andalusia, where spaghetti westerns such as the Dollars trilogy were shot and the Plataforma Solar de Almería tests solar-thermal power.

The Pinnacles Desert's thousands of limestone pillars stand in which Australian state?

Western Australia: the pillars stand in Nambung National Park near the fishing town of Cervantes, about 200 km north of Perth, and were formed from seashell-derived limestone.

India's 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran were carried out in which desert state?

Rajasthan's Pokhran Test Range saw five devices fired over two days in May 1998 under the codename Operation Shakti.

Emi Koussi, the highest mountain in the Sahara, is a volcano in which country?

Chad: Emi Koussi, a shield volcano topping the Tibesti range in the country's far north at about 3,415 m, is the highest point in both Chad and the Sahara.

The Sahel, the Sahara's southern fringe, takes its name from an Arabic word meaning what?

Shore: the Arabic sahil means 'coast' or 'shore', the image being the Sahara as a sea with the Sahel as its southern beach.

Alexander the Great trekked across the Egyptian desert to consult the oracle of Amun at which oasis?

Siwa: in 331 BC Alexander reached the Siwa oasis in Egypt's Western Desert, where legend says birds guided him across the sands and the oracle of Amun hailed him as pharaoh and divine.

Petra, the rock-cut 'Rose City' of southern Jordan, became the capital of which people?

Nabataeans: these nomadic Arab traders settled Petra by the 4th century BC, grew rich on the incense routes and engineered cisterns and conduits to survive the desert.

The Dakar Rally, born as a Paris–Dakar dash, moved to which country in 2020?

Saudi Arabia: after security threats in Mauritania cancelled the 2008 race, the rally ran in South America from 2009 to 2019 before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2020.

The Marathon des Sables, a six-stage ultramarathon since 1986, is run in which country's Sahara?

Morocco: runners cover about 250 km of the Moroccan Sahara south of the Atlas Mountains over six stages carrying their own food; the first edition in 1986 had just 23 competitors.

What keeps Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys almost entirely free of snow?

Katabatic winds: cold, dense air pours downhill off the ice sheet at up to 320 km/h, evaporating snow and ice and leaving the valleys the coldest, driest desert on Earth.

What do geographers call a desert 'sand sea' of more than 125 km² of wind-blown sand?

Erg, from the Arabic for 'dune field': the Sahara's great sand seas such as the Grand Erg Oriental are ergs, while most of the desert is rock and gravel.

Burning Man is staged each year on a dry lakebed in which US state?

Nevada: since 1990 the festival has been built on a dry playa about 160 km north of Reno; the 2020 and 2021 editions were cancelled by the pandemic.

ThrustSSC broke the sound barrier on land in 1997 on which dry lakebed?

Black Rock Desert: on 15 October 1997 Andy Green drove ThrustSSC to 763 mph (1,228 km/h) across the Nevada playa, the first supersonic land speed record.

Star Wars' desert planet Tatooine was filmed largely in which country?

Tunisia: Tatooine's scenes were shot around Tozeur, Matmata and the island of Djerba in 1976, and the planet's name comes from the real Tunisian town of Tataouine.

Mad Max: Fury Road's desert chases were shot mostly in which country in 2012?

Namibia: unexpected rain made wildflowers bloom around Broken Hill, Australia, so the 2012 shoot moved to the dunes of Dorob National Park near Swakopmund on Namibia's coast.

The Chinchorro people of the Atacama made the world's oldest artificial mummies, from around when?

Around 5050 BC: the Chinchorro of northern Chile were stripping, reassembling and clay-coating their dead roughly two thousand years before the earliest Egyptian mummies.

Which Libyan town's 1922 reading of 58°C was struck from the record books in 2012?

A WMO probe found the station's thermometer had been swapped for an uncalibrated greenhouse type just before the reading.

Who in 1931 became the first documented Westerner to cross Arabia's Empty Quarter?

Bertram Thomas, an English civil servant serving the Sultan of Muscat, crossed the Empty Quarter with Rashid Bedouin guides in early 1931 and told the tale in Arabia Felix; Philby followed a year later.

The name Kalahari comes from a Tswana word meaning what?

The great thirst: Kalahari comes from the Tswana kgala, 'the great thirst', apt for a semiarid savanna of red sand with no permanent surface water rather than a true desert.

Why are the Sahara's Tuareg sometimes called the 'Blue People'?

Indigo from their veils tints their skin: the dye in the tagelmust rubs off on the wearer, and unusually it is the men who veil their faces while women traditionally go unveiled.

The Harmattan, a dry, dusty wind off the Sahara, blows over which region each winter?

West Africa: from late November to mid-March the Harmattan haze blows south-west from the Sahara over Nigeria, Ghana and their neighbours, grounding flights and cutting visibility as far as the Gulf of Guinea.