A desert is defined by how little precipitation falls, not by heat. By that definition, which is the largest desert on Earth?
- The Sahara
- The Gobi
- The Arabian Desert
- Antarctica
Why D? And why not the others?
Correct answer: D. Antarctica
Antarctica's interior receives fewer than five centimeters of precipitation a year, which makes the ice-covered continent — at roughly 14 million square kilometers — the largest desert on the planet. The Sahara is the answer almost everyone reaches for, and it truly is the largest hot desert, but at about 8.6 million square kilometers it covers well under two-thirds of Antarctica's area. The Gobi and the Arabian Desert both rank among the biggest deserts on Earth, which makes them plausible-sounding picks, yet each is far smaller than the Sahara, let alone Antarctica. The counterintuitive punchline is that the driest, emptiest desert on Earth is made of ice: precipitation, not temperature, is what earns a landscape the name.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: 'World's largest deserts' (britannica.com/topic/worlds-largest-deserts-2225895)