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Largest deserts

 

Deserts cover about a third of the world’s land area. They range from extremely arid and barren sandy deserts (about four per cent of the total land surface of the globe), through arid (15 per cent) to semi-arid (just under 15 per cent).

sahara

Most deserts have features of all these, with one zone merging into the next, so the start and finish of any desert is not exact. Many of the world’s largest deserts are broken down by geographers into smaller desert regions –the Australian Desert includes the Gibson, Great Sandy, Great Victoria and Simpson, for example.

1 Sahara Northern Africa – 9,100,000 sq km

2 Australian, Australia (Includes Gibson, Great Sandy, Great Victoria and Simpson) – 3,400,00 sq km

3 Arabian Peninsula, Southwest Asia (Includes an-Nafud and Rub al khali) – 2,600,000 sq km

4 Turkestan, Central Asia (Includes Kara-Kum and Kyzylkum) – 1,900,000 sq km

5 Gobi, Central Asia – 1,300,000 sq km

6 North American Desert, US/Mexico (Includes Great Basin, Mojave, Sonorah and Chihuahuan)-1,300,000 sq km

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