The largest desert in the world is Antarctica Nestled around the South Pole, where the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded and which doesn’t receive sunlight for months every year, it’s hard to think of icy Antarctica as a desert. But it is the world’s largest (14.2 million sq.km) because very little precipitation falls there – on average, it gets less than 2 inches a year, mostly as snow. Despite this, vast glaciers cover 99 per cent of its surface as the average temperature (-48 degree Celsius) slows down evaporation to a crawl. Over long periods of time, the snowfall accumulates at a rate faster than Antarctica’s ablation, according to “Discovering Antarctica,” a project of the U.K.’s Royal Geographical Society.
Parts of Antarctica are showing strong signs of warming up along with global climate change, however. Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) over the past 50 years — five times the rate of the rest of the planet. And scientists think that warm ocean waters could be melting Antarctica’s glaciers as they flow under the floating tongues of ice.
Picture Credit : Google