Do you know what is the largest desert on Earth?

According to Wikipedia, “A desert is a landscape or region that receives almost no precipitation. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 10 inches per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation.”

Based on that definition, the world’s largest desert is the continent of Antarctica; it is the world’s driest place. It receives less than two inches of precipitation annually. Antarctica is 5.5 million square miles in area, over one and one-half times larger than the one we most commonly think of, the Sahara Desert. The second largest desert is the Arctic. Coming in third is the Northern Africa’s Sahara Desert, which is more than 3.5 million square miles , slightly smaller that the size of the United States, the world’s fourth largest country.