As much as there are grasslands surrounding the earth scattered all around the world, many are dry lands in parts of the world spread across a large area. These barren and inhospitable territories for centuries have been part of human lives. While these deserts are waterless and are home to a small habitat, they are equally beautiful on their own terms. Here is a list of deserts that are the largest occupying large lands on earth.
Antarctic Desert
This snow desert is spread across an area of 13,829,430 km² and is considered to be the world’s largest desert. This frozen continent is the coldest, driest, and windiest ice land in the world and makes most of the Earth. Covered with snow, it hardly rains in Antarctica and 98 percent of the surface is rocky ground. With such atmospheric conditions the desert is in totality an inhospitable region for humans, but its coastal area is a perfect habitat for penguins, seals, sea lions, gulls, petrels, and cormorants, among other species, to inhabit. A continent located over the South Pole and has the highest average elevation of all the continents in the world.
Arctic Desert
This cold Arctic Desert is the second largest desert in the world spread over an area of 13,726,937 km². Located in the northern polar region of Earth, the desert is stretched over the Arctic Ocean. In its long stretch, the desert covers quite a few large polar deserts that span across Alaska, Greenland, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Like Antarctica this desert also has little to no rainfall but always is under snowfall freeze. Owing to its low temperatures there always forms a permanent blanket of frozen snow covering the great polar cap and the Arctic lands.
Sahara Desert
The Sahara is the most expansive hot desert in the world. Also known as the Greatest Desert it is the third-largest desert on the planet. Located in the northern part of the African continent, the Sahara Desert covers parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan, and Tunisia. Coming from the Arabic word for 'desert', çahra, the desert is so large that it covers 25 percent of Africa’s landmass. It is spread over an area of 9,065,253 km² it covers Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Libya, Chad, and Egypt.
The other large deserts in the world are the Deserts of Australia, Gobi Desert, Kalahari Desert, Syrian Desert, Chihuahuan Desert, Arabian Desert, and the Patagonian Desert.
