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Sunday 5 October 2014

Desert

Only about 20% of the world's deserts are sandy.


More people die in the desert due to drowning than due to the heat. This is because people do not prepare for flash floods, which can be very extreme in the desert.

A glass of milk left in the Lut Desert in Iran will not go off: the heat is so intense it kills all the bacteria.

Deserts represent about one-fifth of the Earth's total surface.

In six hours, the world's deserts receive more energy from the Sun than humans consume in one year.

The only desert in Britain is Dungeness Nature Reserve in Kent.

Around 46,000 square miles of arable land turn to desert every year due to climate change and practices such as forest clear-cutting.


Rain and moisture from the Indian Ocean doesn't make it past the the Himalayas, which resulted in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia being created in its rain shadow.

The Sahara desert stretches for more than three-million square miles.  It is three times bigger than the Arabian desert, which itself is twice as big as the Gobi Desert, which in turn is twice as big as the Great Basin desert of Utah and Nevada.

Because it gets so little precipitation, the continent Antarctica is technically the world’s largest desert.

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