The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America, covering a 600-mile (1,000 km) strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. The Atacama desert is, according to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, the driest desert in the world. The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range and the Andes, as well as a coastal inversion layer created by the cold offshore H...
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The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America, covering a 600-mile (1,000 km) strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. The Atacama desert is, according to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, the driest desert in the world. The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range and the Andes, as well as a coastal inversion layer created by the cold offshore Humboldt Current, keep this over 20 million-year-old desert 50 times drier than California's Death Valley. The Atacama occupies 40,600 square miles (105,000 km) in northern Chile, composed mostly of salt basins (salares), sand, and lava flows.
The Atacama Desert ecoregion, as defined by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), extends from a few kilometers south of the Chile-Peru border to about 30° south latitude. To the north lies the Sechura Desert ecoregion, in Peru, whilst to the south is the Chilean Matorral ecoregion. The National Geographic...
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