The 9 Most Extreme Deserts in the World

1. Antarctica

We typically think of deserts as hot, dry places like the Sahara; in fact, when someone says “desert,” we often think of sand and sun. But deserts, in their most scientific sense, are actually classified by the amount of precipitation they receive. That means that cold polar places, which receive relatively little snowfall, are actually deserts too. Using this criteria, Antarctica is the largest desert in the world, averaging just 166 mm (6.5 inches) of precipitation each year. The continent spans 14 million km (5.4 million miles), making this desert much larger than the Sahara. Although we’d typically think of Antarctica as a “wet” place, thanks to an abundance of snow and ice, the simple fact of the matter is that the temperatures on the continent are so cold and the air is so dry that precipitation—as snow or rain—just doesn’t happen.