The Atacama is the driest place on earth, other than the poles. It receives less than 1 mm of precipitation each year, and some areas haven't seen a drop of rain in more than 500 years.
The driest place on Earth is in Antarctica (which is the Earth's driest continent), in an area called the Dry Valleys. The Valleys' extreme dryness is the result of nearby high mountains that block seaward-flowing ice from getting in, and partially the result of katabatic winds that blow down the mountains.
Although the Atacama is the driest warm desert on Earth that fits the definition of a warm, rocky and sunny desert, there is one place on Earth which is even drier – The McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, the driest place on Earth.
The second driest place is the Atacama Desert, stretching 600 miles from Peru's southern border into northern Chile along the Pacific Coast. No precipitation falls in the Dry Valleys and none for a few years at a time in portions of the Atacama.
The Atacama desert, which stretches for approximately 1,600 km along the western coast of the cone of South America, is the driest place on Earth. Some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall throughout their existence.
But with its "consistently hot footprint over a large area," says Mildrexler, who was not involved in the present study, "the Lut Desert has really emerged as the hottest place on Earth."
Northern Africa is one of the driest regions on Earth, home to the Sahara desert, the largest hot desert in the world. This extremely dry region, where it's not uncommon to have no rain for over a year in some places was once a tropical humid area.
Photographer Amos Chapple returns to our site once once again, bringing amazing images from the state of Meghalaya, India, reportedly the rainiest spot on Earth. The village of Mawsynram in Meghalaya receives 467 inches of rain per year.
Chile is the place in the world which is known for the least amount of rainfall. The lowest average rainfall in Chile is found in the city of Arica. Average rainfall of Arica is 0.03 inch per year.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica make up the driest place on the planet. It hasn't rained there in over 2 million years.
The Atacama Desert stretches for 1000 kilometers along the Pacific coast of Chile, and rainfall can be as low as 8 millimeters per year. There's so little precipitation that there's very little weathering, so over time the surface has built up a crusty layer of salts, further discouraging life there.
The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the world, and the second driest overall, just behind some very specific spots within the McMurdo Dry Valleys as well as the only hot true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts, and the largest fog desert in the world.
Rain is observed near the coast, but most precipitation over Antarctica is in the form of snow or ice crystals. Windy conditions make it difficult to measure snowfall accurately. The average accumulation of snow over the whole continent is estimated to be equivalent to about 150 mm of water per year.
Seven countries (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom) maintain territorial claims in Antarctica, but the United States and most other countries do not recognize those claims.
Antarctica has six months of daylight in its summer and six months of darkness in its winter. The seasons are caused by the tilt of Earth's axis in relation to the sun. The direction of the tilt never changes. But as the Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the planet are exposed to direct sunlight.
Antarctica is technically a desert, and a particularly dry one at that. This is because the cold air simply can't hold much water. There's no precipitation without humidity, and there's no humidity without heat.
Although it doesn't rain all day in Meghalaya, it does rain every day, Chapple told weather.com. The heavy rainfall is due to summer air currents that sweep over the steaming flood plains of Bangladesh.
The average annual rainfall in Mawsynram, which is recognised as the world's wettest by the Guinness Book of Records, is 11,871mm – more than 10 times the Indian national average of 1,083mm.
Mawsynram is a place that receives the highest average rainfall in the world. This place is located in Meghalaya. It receives the majority of its rainfall from the Bay of Bengal branch of the Indian monsoon. Q.
The area receives little rainfall, in fact, half of the Sahara Desert receives less than 1 inch of rain every year. Despite many thinking of the Sahara as a constantly hot climate, temperatures drop dramatically at night, due to the lack of humidity, and can reach lows of -6°C.
The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert, but parts of it could be made green if massive solar and wind farms set up shop there, a new study finds.
Deserts are arid ecosystems that receive fewer than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year. Death Valley, California, above, receives fewer than 5 centimeters (2 inches) of rainfall every year. However, Death Valley's infrequent rain and extreme temperatures can impact the landscape.
More than 300 people live year-round in Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth. Here's what it's like.
A wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C, or around 95 °F, is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance, says Zach Schlader, a physiologist at Indiana University Bloomington. Above that, your body won't be able to lose heat to the environment efficiently enough to maintain its core temperature.