The Sahara is Africa's largest desert, what is its second largest?
"Africa and much of the Congo Basin), since desert and savannah regions of Africa stand up as Earth's largest cloud-free area. Africa is dominated by clear skies even beyond deserts (ex : Sahara, Namib, Kalahari), however, the regions located along the equator are considerably cloudier than the tropics and subtropics. The eastern Sahara/northeastern Africa is particularly noted for its world sunshine records. The area experiences some of the greatest mean annual duration of bright sunshine, as the sun shines bright during approximatively as much as 4,300 hours a year, which is equal to 97% of the possible total. This region"
"Sahara The Sahara (, ; , ', 'the Great Desert') is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of is comparable to the area of China or the United States. The name 'Sahara' is derived from a dialectal Arabic word for ""desert"", ' ( ). The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in"
"government, who, according to Keenan, ""documented a space of intercultural mediation,"" contributing much to preserving the indigenous cultural identities in the region. Sahara The Sahara (, ; , ', 'the Great Desert') is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of is comparable to the area of China or the United States. The name 'Sahara' is derived from a dialectal Arabic word for ""desert"", ' ( ). The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the"
"expanse of the Sahara desert, which is the largest sand desert in the world. In places the desert is cut by irregular watercourses called wadis—streams that flow only after rainfalls but are usually dry. The Sahara’s major landforms include ergs, large seas of sand that sometimes form into huge dunes; the hammada, a level rocky plateau without soil or sand; and the reg, a level plain of gravel or small stones. The Sahara covers the southern part of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and most of Libya. Only two regions of Libya are outside the desert: Tripolitania in the northwest and"
"Libya. Sahara Desert (ecoregion) The Sahara Desert ecoregion, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), includes the hyper-arid center of the Sahara, between 18° and 30° N. It is one of several desert and xeric shrubland ecoregions that cover the northern portion of the African continent. The Sahara Desert is the world's largest hot desert, located in North Africa. It stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. The vast desert encompasses several ecologically distinct regions. The Sahara Desert ecoregion covers an area of in the hot, hyper-arid center of the Sahara, surrounded on the north,"
"Sahara Desert (ecoregion) The Sahara Desert ecoregion, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), includes the hyper-arid center of the Sahara, between 18° and 30° N. It is one of several desert and xeric shrubland ecoregions that cover the northern portion of the African continent. The Sahara Desert is the world's largest hot desert, located in North Africa. It stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. The vast desert encompasses several ecologically distinct regions. The Sahara Desert ecoregion covers an area of in the hot, hyper-arid center of the Sahara, surrounded on the north, south,"
"Deserts reign in most of northern Africa where the Sahara exists, the world's hottest desert where some of the sand dunes can reach 180 metres (590 ft) in height. The Arabian Peninsula is mainly covered by a range of deserts: the Nefud in the north, which is a stony desert; the Rub' Al-Khali or ""Great Arabian Desert"" in the south, and between them, the Dahna desert. In contrast, the Arab World boasts some of the highest mountain ranges in both Africa and Asia. The Atlas Mountains rise from the northern Sahara to peak of 4,167 m before cascading east towards"
"largest in Africa and in the Mediterranean region, Algeria has a vast transportation system which include many transportation infrastructures. Tourism in Algeria Algeria is the largest country on the African continent and the 10th largest country in terms of total area. Located in North Africa, one of the main tourist attractions is the Sahara, the second largest desert in the world. Some sand dunes can reach 180 meters in height This State has been a member of the World Tourism Organization since 1976, but tourism in Algeria i report of the World Tourism Organization published in 2014, Algeria is the"
"Tourism in Algeria Algeria is the largest country on the African continent and the 10th largest country in terms of total area. Located in North Africa, one of the main tourist attractions is the Sahara, the second largest desert in the world. Some sand dunes can reach 180 meters in height This State has been a member of the World Tourism Organization since 1976, but tourism in Algeria i report of the World Tourism Organization published in 2014, Algeria is the 4th tourist destination in Africa in 2013 with 2,7 million foreign tourists, and ranks 111st on the international tourism"
"the site of an inland sea. Running along the south of desert is the plains region known as the Sahel. The arid region, the Sahara — the largest hot desert in the world, covering — extends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Though generally of slight elevation, it contains mountain ranges with peaks rising to Bordered N.W. by the Atlas range, to the northeast a rocky plateau separates it from the Mediterranean; this plateau gives place at the extreme east to the delta of the Nile. That river (see below) pierces the desert without modifying its character. The Atlas"
"during, and after the 14th century, the Trans-Saharan trade routes were used for trade, travel, and scholarship. Much of what scholars know of the Trans-Saharan trade routes comes from the historical writings of Muslim scholars such as Ibn Battuta and Leo Africanus who both crossed the Sahara Desert in the 14th and 15th centuries. These literary narratives combined with archaeological data provide much insight into 14th century trade. Throughout the 14th century, much of African trade revolved around the Trans-Saharan trade routes. Geographically, the Sahara Desert extends over 3.6 million square miles and is the second largest desert on the"
"the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan Region of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including: the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, and the Libyan Desert. For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 41,000 year cycle caused by changes (""precession"") in the"
"eastern Sahara Desert, which occupies 60,000 square kilometers in southern Egypt and northern Sudan, is one of the Earth's largest sand sheets. The Selima is absolutely flat in a few places; in others, active dunes move over its surface. Wind blowing on a sand surface ripples the surface into crests and troughs whose long axes are perpendicular to the wind direction. The average length of jumps during saltation corresponds to the wavelength, or distance between adjacent crests, of the ripples. In ripples, the coarsest materials collect at the crests causing inverse grading. This distinguishes small ripples from dunes, where the"
"desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad. The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are many subdivisions of the great desert: Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert, the Nubian"
"Arabian Desert The Arabian Desert is a vast desert wilderness in Western Asia. It stretches from Yemen to the Persian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq. It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, with an area of . It is the fourth largest desert in the world, and the largest in Asia. At its center is the Rub'al-Khali, one of the largest continuous bodies of sand in the world. Gazelles, oryx, sand cats, and spiny-tailed lizards are just some of the desert-adapted species that survive in this extreme environment, which features everything from red dunes to deadly quicksand. The"
"of the Sahara Desert. The world's most noted deserts have been formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts are large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, some extending beyond the present margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara, the largest hot desert. Desertification has played a significant role in human history, contributing to the collapse of several large empires, such as Carthage, Greece, and the Roman Empire, as well as causing displacement of local populations. Historical evidence"
"Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert forms the northern and eastern part of the Sahara Desert. It describes that part of the Sahara that lies within the present-day state of Libya; it also historically describes the desert to the south of Ancient Libya, a territory which lay to the east of the present-day state. The Libyan Desert is one of the driest, harshest and most remote parts of the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert. This extended desert country is barren, dry and rainless. Modern Libya is divided into the regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and the Fezzan. The country covers an"
"Sahara Desert, forms an integral part of the section of North Africa known as the Maghreb. This area includes Morocco, Tunisia, and the northwestern portion of Libya known historically as Tripolitania. Land boundaries:""Total:"" ""Border countries:"" Libya , Mali , Mauritania , Morocco , Niger , Tunisia , Western Sahara . Area – comparative: roughly 3.5 times the size of Texas and twice the size of Ontario. Coastline: Maritime claims:""Exclusive fishing zone:"" ""Territorial sea:"" Stretching from the Moroccan border the Tell Atlas, including the Djebel Babor formation, is the dominant northwestern mountain range. Stretching more than 600 kilometers eastward from the"
"Western Sahara Western Sahara (; """"; ; Spanish and French: ) is a disputed territory in the Maghreb region of North Africa, partially controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and partially Moroccan-occupied, bordered by Morocco proper to the north, Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Its surface area amounts to . It is one of the most sparsely populated territories in the world, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at just over 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Laayoune, the largest city in"
"Algerian Desert The Algerian Desert () is located in north-central Africa and is part of the Sahara Desert. The desert occupies more than four-fifths of the Algerian territory. Its expansion starts from the Saharan Atlas, more or less as a stony desert and the farther inland you get the more of a sand dune desert it becomes. In the southwestern parts is the mountain range Tassili n'Ajjer located. This area is a subject of great archaeological interest and was put up on the ""World Heritage List"" by UNESCO in 1982. The area is known for extreme aridity and extreme heat,"
"Rub' al Khali The Rub' al Khali desert (; , i.e., ""the Empty Quarter"") is the largest contiguous sand desert (erg) in the world, encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula. The desert covers some (the area of long. 44°30′−56°30′E, and lat. 16°30′−23°00′N) including parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It is part of the larger Arabian Desert. The desert is 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long, and 500 kilometres (310 mi) wide. Its surface elevation varies from in the southwest to around sea level in the northeast. The terrain is covered with"
"Great Sand Sea The Great Sand Sea is an approximately 72,000 km² sand desert (erg) in sahara between western Egypt and eastern Libya in North Africa. Some 74% of the area is covered by sand dunes. The Great Sand Sea stretches for a length of about 650 km from north to south and a width of 300 km from east to west. On satellite images this desert shows a pattern of long sand ridges running in a roughly north-south direction. However, despite the apparent uniformity the Great Sand Sea has two large areas with different types of megadunes. The Egyptian"
"Grand Erg Oriental The Grand Erg Oriental (English: 'Great Eastern Sand Sea') is a large ""erg"" or ""field of sand dunes"" in the Sahara Desert. Situated for the most part in Saharan lowlands of northeast Algeria, the Grand Erg Oriental covers an area some 600 km wide by 200 km north to south. The erg's northeastern edge spills over into neighbouring Tunisia. The Grand Erg Oriental is a desert, a natural region receiving very little rainfall. It is the largest ""Erg"" in Algeria, the next in size being the much smaller Grand Erg Occidental ('Western Sand Sea'). The largest erg"
"included, the Sahara would be . It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada (stone plateaus); ergs (sand seas – large areas covered with sand dunes) form only a minor part, but many of the sand dunes are over high. Wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features: sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains (""reg""), dry valleys (""wadi""), dry lakes (""oued""), and salt flats (""shatt"" or ""chott""). Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania. Several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the"
"desert and of the Libyan Desert. These deserts protected the Kingdom of the Pharaohs from western threats and were referred to as the ""red land"" in ancient Egypt. Towns and cities include Alexandria, the second largest city; Aswan; Asyut; Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital and largest city; El Mahalla El Kubra; Giza, the site of the Pyramid of Khufu; Hurghada; Luxor; Kom Ombo; Port Safaga; Port Said; Sharm El Sheikh; Suez, where the south end of the Suez Canal is located; Zagazig; and Minya. Oases include Bahariya, Dakhla, Farafra, Kharga and Siwa. Protectorates include Ras Mohamed National Park, Zaranik Protectorate"
"of annual precipitation (this is a long-term average, since precipitation varies annually). Important cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Béchar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaïa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad. The Sahara is the world's largest low-latitude hot desert. The area is located in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a significant belt of semi-permanent subtropical warm-core high pressure where the air from upper levels of the troposphere tends to sink towards the ground. This steady descending airflow causes a warming"
"of Tripoli. The range is adjacent to Niger and located approximately halfway between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Chad, just south of the Tropic of Cancer. The East African Rift is to the east and the Cameroon line lies to the southwest. The range is in length, in width, and spans . It draws a large triangle with sides of and vertices facing south, northwest and northeast in the heart of the Sahara, making it the largest geologic area of the desert. It is slightly larger than the Massif Central in France, with which it shares some geomorphological characteristics. The"
"Earth's axis as it rotates around the sun, which change the location of the North African Monsoon. It is next expected to become green in about 15,000 years (17,000 AD). There is a suggestion that the last time that the Sahara was converted from savanna to desert it was partially due to overgrazing by the cattle of the local population. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. It covers , amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with a mean annual precipitation of less than 250 mm were"
"Geography of the African Union The African Union covers almost the entirety of continental Africa and several off-shore islands. Consequently, it is wildly diverse, including the world's largest hot desert (the Sahara), huge jungles and savannas, and the world's longest river (the Nile). The AU presently has an area of 29,922,059 km² (18,592,705 mi²), with 24,165 km² (15,015 mi²) of coastline. The vast majority of this area is on continental Africa, while the only significant territory off the mainland is the island of Madagascar (the world's fourth largest), accounting for slightly less than 2% of the total. African Union at"
"Dasht-e Lut The Lut Desert, widely referred to as Dasht-e Lut (, ""Emptiness Plain""), is a large salt desert located in the provinces of Kerman and Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. It is the world's 27th-largest desert, and was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List on July 17, 2016. The surface of its sand has been measured at temperatures as high as 70 °C (159 °F), making it one of the world's driest and hottest places. Iran is climatically part of the Afro-Asian belt of deserts, which stretches from the Cape Verde islands off West Africa all the way to Mongolia"
"Desert and others. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years. To the north, the Sahara skirts the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya, but in Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara borders the Mediterranean forest, woodland, and scrub eco-regions of northern Africa, all of which have a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot summers and cool and rainy winters. According to the botanical criteria of Frank White and geographer Robert Capot-Rey, the northern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the northern limit of date palm cultivation and the southern limit of the range of esparto, a"
"Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. The northern half of Africa is occupied by the world's most extensive hot, dry region, the Sahara Desert. Some deserts are also occupying much of southern Africa : the Namib and the Kalahari. Across Asia, a large annual rainfall minimum, composed primarily of deserts, stretches from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia west-southwest through western Pakistan (Balochistan) and Iran into the Arabian Desert in Saudi Arabia. Most of Australia is semi-arid or"
"Sahara Desert, while its southern areas contain both savanna and plains, and its central portion contains very dense jungle (rainforest) regions. The equatorial region near the Intertropical Convergence Zone is the wettest portion of the continent. Annually, the rain belt across the continent marches northward into Sub-Saharan Africa by August, then moves back southward into south-central Africa by March. Mesoscale convective systems which form in tandem with tropical waves that move along the Intertropical Convergence Zone during the summer months become the seedlings for tropical cyclones which form in the northern Atlantic and northeast Pacific oceans. Areas with a savannah"