Ask Me Everything7

Although most of the Sahara is too hot and dry for most plants to survive, trees such as palms grow around oases—fertile spots in the desert fed with water from underground springs. Farmers living beside the oases grow crops in smali tree-shaded gardens.

Tell me morę: deserts

A desert is an area with Iow precipitation (rain, snów, or mist).

One fifth of Earth’s land mass is covered by desert.

s	The Sahara	Three Saharan
Ul H	01: The Sahara is the largest desert in	winds
	the world, covering	^ Haboob w A Sudden violent
>	most of north and
O	west Africa.	wind that causes
H Ul	02: Its highest peak is Emi Koussi at a height of 11,204 ft (3,415 m).	dust-storms (below) f w m Blows in the winter, carrying dust and sand all /
	03: The highest temperaturę ever	the way to the Carihbean 4 /\0 Khamsin w O Hot, dusty wind that blows for 50 days per year
	recorded was 136°F (57°C) in 1922. ^

The driest desert in the world is the Atacama in Chile, where it hasn’t rained sińce records began.

The Arctic and Antarctica are both technically deserts because of the Iow precipitation.

04: The average rainfall in the Sahara is 3 in (76 mm) per year.

05: Only arond one fifth of the Sahara is sand. The rest is madę up of mountains, rocks, and gravel.

_pa\0^^S .„•^'DO'NS

c^^e

^ !■ 16*

Patagonia Desert (South America) 260,000 sq miles (673,000 sq km)

Chihuahuan Desert (Mexico)

175,000 sq miles (450,000 sq km)

QC,C^

Ten deserts around the world

Sahara Desert (North Africa)

3,500,000 sq miles (9,100,000 sq km)

Arabian Desert (Arabian Peninsula) 900,000 sq miles (2,330,000 sq km)

Gobi Desert (Mongolia and China) 500,000 sq miles (1,300,000 sq km)

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