Is Antarctica a desert?
Me and my family were playing the game where you answer questions and the question came up "what is the largest desert?", funnily enough a few days earlier I was watching discovery channel and it said Antarctica was the largest desert, I said it and was laughed upon, so who was correct? I let it slide because I thought I was wrong, the card also said it was the sharia.
Comments
Yes, Antarctica is a desert since it receives less than 250 mm or 10 inches of average annual precipitation. However, it is classified as a cold desert, since its temperatures can dip to a low of -84.4 degrees Celsius.
Is Antarctica A Desert
Antarctica
Well yes and no. The normal desert you think of is with sand, and all that. But Antarctica is also a desert because it is, yes, also a very dry place and it gets very few rain. I guess a place is considered a desert when it gets somewhat to something inches of rain each year. So Antarctica get few rain, so it's a desert! And it is the largest.
People always imagine a desert to be full of sand with the occasional oasis. However the definition is:-
1 : a : arid land with usually sparse vegetation; especially : such land having a very warm climate and receiving less than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of sporadic rainfall annually
b : an area of water apparently devoid of life
2
archaic : a wild uninhabited and uncultivated tract
3
: a desolate or forbidding area
So definition 2 would fit the Antarctic. I was told at Grammar School over 50 years ago that the Antarctic was classed as a desert due to it's inability to support human life.
You can call it a desert if the place is dry and it cannot sustain life to beings like plants and animals.
Antartica desert is the largest desert. The second largest is the Arctic desert. Both of them are frozen that's why sometimes people don't consider them as deserts.
Usually they would that Sahara desert is the largest because it has a hot climate unlike Antartica and Arctic desert. But Sahara desert is just the third largest desert in the world.
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Is Antarctica a desert?
Me and my family were playing the game where you answer questions and the question came up "what is the largest desert?", funnily enough a few days earlier I was watching discovery channel and it said Antarctica was the largest desert, I said it and was laughed upon, so who was correct? I...
It is. When one says the word desert, the first thing that springs to mind is sand and sun. However deserts can be cold places too, like Antarctica
From Wikipedia:
" At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in thickness.
Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica IS considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F). There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive there, including many types of algae, animals (for example mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades), bacteria, fungi, plants, and protista. Vegetation where it occurs is tundra. In most of the interior of the continent, precipitation is very low, down to 20 mm (0.8 in) per year;
The Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى, aṣ-Ṣaḥarāʾ al-Kubrā , "the Greater Desert") is the world's hottest desert, the THIRD largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic. At over 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it covers most of North Africa, making it almost as large as China or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the sand dunes can reach 180 metres (590 ft) in height. It covers the N. African countries of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. Its length is 2,983 miles, East to West and its width is 1,118 miles, North to South.
Antarctica is technically the largest desert. Some games don't recognize it though, they usually say Sahara.