You might think that we are talking about a very remote desert in some hot region, but in reality everything is completely different.
If we were asked to imagine the driest place on Earth, we would probably imagine a remote place full of sand and dunes in a hot area like the Sahara. However, the researchers note that not everything is as clear-cut as we might assume, he writes IFLScience.
According to NASA, one of the driest places on our planet is actually the Atacama Desert located in Chile. Indeed, in some areas of this desert, precipitation falls from only 1 to 3 mm per year. Moreover, scientists believe that the driest region of the Atacama Desert did not receive much rain in the 401 years between 1570 and 1971.
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However, there is also the driest place on Earth, located in the world’s driest Antarctica. The fact is that cold air holds less moisture than warmer air, which makes the continent very dry in terms of rain and snow.
NASA researchers note that snow falls on the continent: a few meters per year in coastal areas and only a few centimeters per year inland. This makes it the driest continent on the planet as a whole.
Meanwhile, in the driest region of Antarctica, also known as the Dry Valleys, it hasn’t rained for about two million years. The area covers 4,800 square kilometers and has almost no water, in part because the surrounding mountains keep moisture out of the area. The second factor affecting the dryness of the region is the Khattab winds, which, moving at speeds of up to 320 kilometers per hour, evaporate and remove moisture from the region.
Note that this region in Antarctica is often used by NASA scientists as an analogue to Mars due to the extreme conditions that prevail here. However, despite the extremely difficult conditions, even life has crept into the area: In the slightly damp interior of the rock, scientists have found photosynthetic bacteria.
previously to focus He wrote that Hell is on Earth and is located in Russia: the temperature at this inhabited point reaches -71.2 ° C.
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