The Driest Place on Earth: the Atacama Desert

The Atacama desert is not the driest place on earth. Antarctica as it receives less than 2 inches of rain a year. In some places it has not rained for 2 million years.

Not 2 million years, never.It has never rained there and theres no life there at all, not even bacteria

Atacama desert is the driest place on earth using average annual precipitation as a yardstick for measure. The Atacama desert receives less than half the amount of precipitation per year than does Antartica and the Atatcama desert has an average relative humidity of around 10%, that is really, REALLY low! Contrary to popular belief, life DOES exist in the Atacama desert as microorganisms have recently been discovered living inside baseball-sized stones of sodium chloride (table salt, of all things). Living inside the interior of the salt rocks protects the single-celled organisms from the arid atmosphere and they get all of their water from the rare and breif moments when the humidity increases to higher levels (it has been discovered that the humidity in certain areas of the Atacama desert can temporarily reach up to 75%). There are however, regions of the Atacama desert that have been shown to not have received ANY preciptation for several million years, as evidenced by the presence of gypsum, a mineral that can easily be dissolved in the presence of water as it readily crumbles to dust with little or no pressure at all. Obviously, had the Atacama desert received any more than 0.25" of rain at ANY one point in time the gypsum stones would be dissolved and no longer present. Another stunning fact about the Atacama desert is that geologists have discovered that not only is it incredibly dry, but it's also incredibly OLD, about 150 million years old! That means that Atacama has been a desert for a shocking 150 million years, approximately 5 times longer than the Sahara desert at about 30 million years old.

but Antarctica is made of mostly snow. Just because it barely rains, doesn't mean there is no moistness at all.

i thought places where the sun shines are the most driest places on earth but i stand corrected

No snow. Just dry ice.

actually it is, they found a bunch of gypsum rocks on the desert floor that they say would have been dissolved already if it had rained 2 inches (total!) in the previous 124 million years, less than a mm per millennium, THATS DRY. Antartica is the driest continent but theres isolated pockets in the atacarma that are as dry & desolate as mars, they've also found algae that live in salt deposits that they say could easily exist under similar circumstances on mars.

This is a pretty good article :]
Thanks for the help!

Wrong! The dry valley region in Antarctica is the driest place, also being one of the highest and windiest places on earth.

why do you think that is intesting i think it is a lie

yes it is! NO IT ISNNT! yes it is! NO IT ISNT.... who cares.... even if the dry valley is dryer, its not a desert by my standards.... can we just apreciate that this place is really friggin dry?
thnx

Places in the Atacama are the driest on earth. Antarctica may be the driest continent but there is recorded instances of snow in Antarctica (which is huge), but areas of the Atacama have no recorded history of precipitation ever. So.....yes Antarctica is the driest continent but NOT the driest place on earth. One of the wettest places on the earth is east of the Atacama Desert, the Amazon basin. Just those pesky Andes are in the way.

i am doing a 9000 km bike ride and i am biking through this desert. hope theres enough water!

your a badass, go lance!

horrifiying

Actually, The Arctic has the driest place on earth. The dry valley winds not only stop percipitation from forming, but the winds also strip all the moisture from the land. Scientists have found seals that have acidentaly wandered into the valley, mummified just from the wind.

What is the real driest place in the world because this is not the driest place in the world I want the right answer I need it for Social Studies now it as to be some place because I cant find it.

i cant belive it only rains an inch in this desert

Wow awesome

As the anonymous person indicated back on the 30th of January 2010, it's the McMurdo Dry Valleys region within Antarctica, not the entire continent which at the very least tends to get a bit damp around the edges where the seas are ;) .

I'm pretty sure that this article is correct considering that both National Geographic and the History channel both back say that the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth. And they say in some spots it hasn't rained for over 15 millions years in the Atacama.

actually, the reason why is because it just blows around and then gets stuck and frozen to the ground so there is now about 2 miles deep worth of snow building up since the last 2 billion years

The history channel also said that the Sahara is the largest desert in the world. Wrong again, as I'm sure where we are aware is also Antarctica. They are not infallible.

what
the
hill

This is Awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if you refer bible the world was once covered with water in noha's period so how can u say it hasn't rained there

Gc, that's such a stupid comment, it's almost funny.

I am doing a school prodject on the Atacama and i must say that this helped me alot and is now a reccomended website from me, along with a few others and would reccomend it to anyone who is doing research on it who cannot go there personally to study.

Dry Valley Antarctica is the driest place on Earth. No rain in 2 million years, that includes snow. Nothing left to say.

Atacama is driest.....nothing left to say.

intersting! i think i should have a visit to that place. is it condusive?

Antartica or Atacama??? Which is drier???

Dr. Tibor Dunai, who spoke before the American Geophysical Union, told the BBC in a news article: "We found loose sediment surfaces that would be washed away by any desert rainfall and these are older than 20 million years," he said. This is much older than other hyper-arid regions, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica (10-11 million years) and the Namib Desert in Africa (5 million years). "

It's SO true.... Antarctica is the driest on earth. Even though its pretty much floating on water it recieves less than 2 inches of rain each year, it's so dry. ;(

Antarctica is completely covered in water -- ice. So the air may be dry, but the ground is not. A warm finger will get wet if you touch the ice. There is NO water on the surface of the Atacama desert. Therefore Atacama is the driest place.

The definition of a desert is a place that gets little or no precipitation. Classifying a place that has ice, yet hardly any precipitation, as non-desert is just silly. Also, ice is not water. Yes, they are both H20, but they are in two different forms, one being a solid and one being a liquid. Water does not equal ice. There is a huge, and I mean HUGE difference. And, on top of that, melting ice isn't precipitation. So please, the next time you type up an outrageous comment such as that, stop and think.

When people mention antarctica we all think of snow & ice but the dry valleys are true desert like areas with no snow on the ground. None even blows in from outside as the winds * across the tops of these deep valleys at 200 mph. The atacama desert is also like this in most places, however there are small localised areas that have weather stations that DO register some rainfall (1-2 mm per annum). This is enough to raise the average of the whole area to ( just ) slightly more than the dry valleys in antarctica. We are talking tiny amounts but Antarctica is first & atacama is the second driest place on earth.
I hope this clears everything up for everyone.

Sometimes places like that can really bring out stress now and again

Is Antarctica the driest place on earth or Atacama?

New Mexico is the driest place on earth

great information!

the desert is so cool you can find deead bannanas