“To call it a desert, shouldn’t it be a dry, sunny place?” You may think. Antarctica is just such a place!

So why this title? Sahara don’t have Antarctica?

Let’s start with the basics: what does desert mean?

Regions with less than 250 mm annual precipitationdesertIt’s called “. There are few places in the world that fit this description. Although one of them is the Sahara, you haven’t even thought about the other two: Antarctica and the Arctic.

What makes a desert a desert is actually the heat, the sand or the heat camels not. If the region does not receive rainfall, it can be described as a desert. Antarctica has the reputation of being the largest desert in the world with an area of ​​14,500 meters.

In fact, the Sahara Desert is known to have a wetter surface than Antarctica.

The last snow and rain fell in some parts of Antarctica millions of years ago. Obviously this is enough to put it in the desert category. But increasing global warming in recent years Antarctica also has a negative impact on it. Glaciers are melting and the amount of snowfall is increasing by 10%.

Of course the largest desert in the world Antarctica However, this global warming has not been harmful. It snowed in the Sahara for the first time in 37 years.

So even though Antarctica seems moist, the ground surface is actually very dry. This may seem strange to us, because we usually associate the definition of desert with temperature, but there are also cold deserts in the world. Antarctica It is one of the “coldest” deserts at -87.2 degrees.

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