Ranked: The World’s Largest Deserts

Ranked: The World’s Largest Deserts

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The world’s two largest deserts aren’t scorching hot landscapes. They’re the frozen polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic.

Characterized by extremely low precipitation, deserts are found on every continent and cover about one-third of Earth’s land.

This visualization ranks and maps the world’s largest deserts by area, based on data from WorldAtlas, showing how Earth’s biggest dry regions range from ice sheets to subtropical basins.

Antarctica and the Arctic Are Earth’s Largest Deserts

Accounting for all of Antarctica and much of the Arctic region, the Antarctic Desert and Arctic Desert cover 5.5 million and 5.4 million square miles, respectively. They are the world’s only polar deserts.

The data table below shows the world’s 10 largest deserts and their area in square miles and kilometers, along with their desert type and geographic span:

Desert	Location	Type	Area in sq. miles	Area in sq. kilometers
Antarctic	Antarctica	Polar	5,500,000	14,200,000
Arctic	Canada Greenland Iceland Norway Sweden Finland Russia	Polar	5,400,000	13,900,000
Sahara	Western Sahara Algeria Libya Egypt Mauritania Mali Niger Chad Sudan	Subtropical	3,500,000	9,000,000
Arabian	Jordan Iraq Saudi Arabia UAE Oman Yemen	Subtropical	1,000,000	2,600,000
Gobi	China Mongolia	Cold winter	500,000	1,300,000
Patagonian	Argentina	Cold winter	260,000	670,000
Great Victoria	Australia	Subtropical	250,000	650,000
Kalahari	Namibia Botswana South Africa	Subtropical	220,000	560,000
Great Basin	U.S.	Cold winter	190,000	490,000
Syrian	Syria Jordan Saudi Arabia Iraq	Subtropical	190,000	490,000

With an average of just 0.39 inches (10 millimeters) of annual precipitation, the Antarctic Desert is one of the driest places on Earth. Although it is covered by ice, its extremely low precipitation makes it a desert by definition.

Spanning several northern countries including Canada, Greenland, and Russia, the Arctic Desert receives more precipitation than Antarctica at roughly 6–10 inches annually. However, Arctic air is too cold to retain much moisture.

The Sahara Is Still the Largest Hot Desert

The Sahara Desert ranks third overall, but it is the largest hot desert in the world.

Covering 3.5 million square miles (nine million square kilometers), an area comparable to China, it is by far the largest non-polar desert. The Sahara stretches across parts of Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Chad, Eritrea, Sudan, Tunisia, and Mali.

Its scale is also changing. Climate change, human activity, and natural climate cycles have contributed to the expansion of many dry regions, and the Sahara’s area has increased by more than 10% since 1920.

Subtropical and Cold Winter Deserts Round Out the Ranking

After the Sahara, the Arabian Desert ranks fourth at one million square miles, making it the second-largest subtropical desert in the dataset.

The Gobi Desert follows at 500,000 square miles and is classified as a cold winter desert spanning China and Mongolia. Further down the ranking, the Patagonian Desert in Argentina covers 260,000 square miles, while Australia’s Great Victoria Desert covers 250,000 square miles.

The two smallest deserts in the top 10 are the Great Basin Desert and Syrian Desert, each covering about 190,000 square miles. Even at the bottom of this ranking, these regions remain enormous landscapes shaped by limited rainfall and extreme environmental conditions.

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• Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-largest-deserts/