Deserts, Ranked

At about 9.2 million sq km it is the largest hot desert on Earth, roughly the size of the United States, and the very image the word 'desert' conjures.

Technically the largest desert on the planet at over 14 million sq km, since its interior receives almost no precipitation despite being buried in ice.

Some weather stations here have never recorded rain, and its Mars-like terrain is used by NASA to test rovers and by astronomers for the world's clearest skies.

The most biologically diverse desert in North America and the only place the giant saguaro cactus grows wild, thriving on twin summer-and-winter rainy seasons.

Considered the oldest desert on Earth at 55-plus million years, home to the towering red dunes of Sossusvlei and fog-drinking beetles found nowhere else.

Asia's great cold desert, where the first fossilized dinosaur eggs were discovered in 1923 and where temperatures swing from -40C to over 45C.

Home to the iconic Joshua tree and to Las Vegas, and it contains Death Valley plus the highest air temperature ever officially recorded on Earth.

The largest contiguous sand desert on Earth, a 650,000 sq km sea of dunes so hostile it was one of the last major regions to be crossed by outsiders.

A vast semi-arid savanna across southern Africa that supports meerkats, lions, and the San people, and greens dramatically after seasonal rains.

Recorded 56.7C (134F) at Furnace Creek in 1913, the highest air temperature ever measured, and its Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America.

Jordan's spectacular sandstone-and-granite desert, a UNESCO site that doubled as Mars in 'The Martian' and hosted the filming of 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

The largest hot desert in North America and a global center of cactus diversity, though it lacks the marquee scenery of its Sonoran neighbor.

Straddling India and Pakistan, it is the most densely populated desert in the world, supporting agriculture and livestock on its arid margins.

The largest desert in Australia at about 348,750 sq km, remote and sparsely visited, better known for nuclear test history than tourism.

One of the world's largest shifting-sand deserts, whose name is popularly glossed as a warning to travelers and which the ancient Silk Road detoured around.

Covers roughly 70 percent of Turkmenistan and hosts the Darvaza 'Door to Hell' gas crater, which has burned continuously since Soviet engineers lit it decades ago.

The largest desert in the Americas, a bleak, wind-scoured cold desert in Argentina's rain shadow with little of the drama of its Andean backdrop.

Ethiopia's Danakil sits in a volcanic depression with year-round temperatures often above 45C, acid pools, and a persistent lava lake — routinely called the hottest place on Earth.

It did not exist before the 1960s: it is the toxic, salt-and-pesticide-laden seabed left behind when Soviet irrigation drained the Aral Sea, one of the worst ecological disasters in history.