Largest desert on Earth

What to remember

The largest desert in the world is an ice desert. Antarctica, centred on the South Pole and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, covers 14,200,000 km², which makes it the largest desert on Earth. It is a polar ice and tundra desert.

The continent is almost entirely icebound: some 98% of it lies under the Antarctic ice sheet, the largest in the world and also its largest reservoir of fresh water. Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so heavy that in places it has pushed the bedrock more than 2.5 km below sea level. Subglacial lakes of liquid water also exist.