Desert countries of the world from the Sahara to the Atacama

Desert does not just mean sand. Above all it means that rain almost never falls and very little grows. For a handful of countries this is not some remote corner but the normal state of things: the desert takes up most of the land, and life crowds onto the few edges where there is water. Here are the great desert regions and the countries they shape. From North Africa to South America they show that a desert can look very different, hot or cold, made of sand or of bare rock.

The Sahara and its belt

The Sahara, at around 9.2 million square kilometres, is the largest hot desert in the world and, after the cold deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic, the third-largest of any kind. Contrary to the cliché, it is mostly gravel, stone and bare rock, with the famous sand dunes making up only a smaller share. It runs from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and touches roughly a dozen countries. In places like Libya, Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania the desert share is so high that almost the entire population lives on the coast or along a river.

Egypt is the clearest example. The Nile valley and its delta form a thin green ribbon, with nothing but sand on either side. More than 90 per cent of the country is desert, and practically everyone lives on the remaining few per cent. Without the Nile, which carries water from tropical Africa deep into the desert, that green ribbon would not exist.

The Arabian Peninsula

The southern third of the Arabian Peninsula holds the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, the largest continuous sand desert on Earth. It is about the size of France and holds roughly half as much sand as the whole Sahara. It spreads across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Almost no one lives there permanently, as it is simply too hot and too dry. Life clings to the edges instead, on the coasts and over the groundwater of oases, where cities of millions have grown up in just a few decades.

Namibia, Mongolia and Chile

Three more countries carry their desert in their name or their character. The Namib on the coast of Namibia is reckoned the oldest desert in the world, at least 55 million years old, with red dunes that run right down to the Atlantic. Rain barely falls here, and many plants and animals live off the fog that rolls in from the sea each morning. The Gobi in southern Mongolia, by contrast, is a cold desert: in winter the temperature drops far below zero, in summer it turns hot. The Gobi is famous for its dinosaur fossils, with whole skeletons recovered from the sand.

And the Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert outside the poles. Some weather stations there have never recorded rain, and a few patches are so hostile to life that researchers use them to test conditions like those on Mars. The clear, dry sky also makes the plateau one of the best places on Earth for large observatories.

The desert regions at a glance

Five regions shape whole countries:

• Sahara: around 9.2 million km2, the largest hot desert, shaping Egypt, Libya, Algeria and their neighbours.
• Rub al Khali: the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert, on the Arabian Peninsula.
• Namib: the oldest desert in the world, on the Namibian coast, dunes to the sea.
• Gobi: a cold desert in southern Mongolia, with extreme temperature swings.
• Atacama: the driest desert outside the poles, in northern Chile.

Why it matters in a quiz

Desert countries are easy to place once you carry the belt in your head. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are almost continuously dry, which narrows the options sharply. An outline with a long coast and a large empty interior often points to a desert country. At the same time the size can fool you: countries like Niger or Chad are enormous, yet the inhabited part is tiny.

In CountryRush you get to know these countries by outline and flag, including the quiet desert states that rarely make the news. The Daily Trip takes you into the Sahara one day and to the Atacama the next.