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What is the largest hot desert in the world?
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What is the largest hot desert in the world?

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What is the largest hot desert in the world?

The World's Largest Hot Desert

When most people picture a desert, they imagine endless sand, blazing sun, and scorching heat. The largest desert that fits this image, the largest hot desert in the world, is the Sahara, an immense expanse of dry land covering much of northern Africa.

An Almost Unimaginable Size

The Sahara is enormous. It covers an area almost as large as the entire United States, stretching across nearly a dozen countries in northern Africa. It runs all the way from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. Such a vast space makes the Sahara one of the most striking geographical features on the whole planet, dominating the top third of Africa.

Hot Desert Versus Cold Desert

The question carefully says "hot desert," and that detail matters. A desert is really defined by how little rain it receives, not by temperature. By that definition, the single largest desert on Earth is actually Antarctica, a frozen, dry land, followed by the Arctic. These are cold deserts. Among the hot deserts, the kind with burning sand and high temperatures, the Sahara is the undisputed largest.

More Than Just Sand

While the Sahara is famous for its great seas of sand dunes, it is far more varied than that image suggests. Much of the desert is actually rocky plains, gravel, and bare mountains. Temperatures can be extreme, soaring during the day and dropping sharply at night. Despite the harsh conditions, the Sahara is not empty. Millions of people live in and around it, and it has been crossed by trade routes for thousands of years.

Source

This article was written using information from Wikipedia.