Largest Desert in the World? Not the Sahara!

Conventional wisdom holds that the Sahara Desert spanning across North Africa is the world's largest desert. That is true if you only consider non-polar deserts! We would need to wear cozy parkas and to shield our skin from bitter-cold temperatures in order to walk on what truly is the world's largest desert: the Antarctic Polar Desert. This vast feature encompasses about 14,245,000 km² and 5,500,000 mi² of land.

Switching from the South Pole to the North one, we should know that the second-largest desert is the Arctic Polar Desert. Covering areas of Québec (extreme northern part), the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon (CANADA), Greenland (DENMARK), FINLAND, NORWAY, RUSSIA, SWEDEN, Alaska (UNITED STATES), the Arctic Polar Desert boasts an area of approximately 14,000,000 km² and 5,400,000 mi². Finally, the Sahara Desert is in 3rd place: 9,200,000 km² and 3,550,000 mi².