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Somebody should make a world map with all these deserts

Why Antarctic is in this list, but Greenland is not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.140.253.8 ( talk) 18:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC) reply

What about Tibet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.243.203 ( talk) 12:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC) reply

Based on the following sources, I believe Siberia merits inclusion:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/graphics/wcprecipitationworldmap.gif

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/map/T045699A.gif

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/tropical/lecture_03/16m.jpg

Please comment if you have suggestions as to how to define the Siberian desert, otherwise I'll figure it out on my own.

- Yarilo2 ( talk) 04:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC) reply

Don't figure it out on your own. If you can't find a reliable published source that's already figured it out, don't include it. Dricherby ( talk) 12:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC) reply

• Siberia is farthest you get from the definition of a desert. It is a heavily forested area. The entry listed the whole Far North (Russia) area as a desert, which is as ridiculous as saying Amazonia is a desert. Beaumain ( talk) 22:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC) reply

The list of top 11 on Desert is totally different. Surely we need some continuity on wikipedia.---- Greatestrowerever ^{Talk Page} 12:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC) reply

Agreed. I've marked the articles as contradicting each other. Dricherby ( talk) 13:12, 18 December 2008 (UTC) reply

Deserts of Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserts_of_Australia has many deserts of greater than 20k sq mi in area that should be in this list

Many parts of Australia outside the above list have less than 10" annual precipitation. They should be also in the list (esp as Antarctica is listed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.18.90.151 ( talk) 02:48, 19 January 2014 (UTC) reply

I can't really read the text on the image at the moment, so I'm planning on making it wider. However, I'm kind of at a loss as to how to do so. If I go for a set size of 819px (which is pretty much as small as you can go while still maintaining readability), I'm worried that users with smaller browsers will become annoyed. Ideally, I'd like to use Template:Panorama, but that doesn't work in IE (no surprise there). The other option would be using Template:Wide image, e.g. {{Wide image|deserts.png|900px|Some of the Earth's biggest deserts}}, but both the grayed-out scrollbar at the bottom and the fact that the box expands to maximum screen width make this look rather ugly.
I'll stick with the set size for now, but if anybody has any better ideas, please have a go at fixing this! Thanks, – Spudtater ( talk • contribs) 10:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Why is the Arctic ocean listed? I mean its an ocean...even if it doesn't get any rain/snow it is not a land mass!

We have this as 13.7 million km², referenced to Geology.com. However, this is a very dubious figure. Have a look at the polar-projection map that heads Arctic. Probably over 2/3 of the land area in the Arctic is in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Working a quick BOTE calculation from Climate of the Arctic#Precipitation, I come up with, roughly, 1.1 Mkm² of desert (defined as <10 in precip/yr, which is what that article uses) in Grenland, and another 0.7m Mkm² in Canada. By eyeball, all the rest might add 0.8 Mkm², for an overall LAND area of Arctic desert of around 2.6 Mkm² .

I'm guessing the Geology.com figure is for TOTAL area (land plus water). I've tagged the Arctic desert figure as "dubious". Maybe someone can find a cite? Best, Pete Tillman ( talk) 20:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC) reply

I agree with the concerns expressed. Why is the Arctic included in the list, given that it is mostly ocean rather than land? This has been "discussed" (though with very few participants) at Talk:Desert. Ghmyrtle ( talk) 16:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC) reply

I agree it's dubious, in fact I strongly doubt the reliability of that source: they include Sweden as part of their "Arctic desert" although most of Sweden receives between 500 and 800 mm of precipitation each year (according to the Sweden article), far above the 250mm threshold for being a desert. I also doubt that Norway and Finland have much, if any, desert area. -- Roentgenium111 ( talk) 21:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC) reply

I have looked for a more authoritative source for desert areas, but haven't found anything so far. Any ideas? Ghmyrtle ( talk) 21:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC) reply

Yeah, not probably much desert in Finland. I looked from the desert article and there was under 250 mm rain at average per year. Then I looked for the northernmost municipality in Finland, Utsjoki, and it's Finnish wikipedia article has a average of 415 mm per year. What in earth have the geology.com staff been doing? 85.217.14.48 ( talk) 19:07, 22 March 2011 (UTC) reply

I looked pretty hard, back in 2009, and struck out. I'm not sure what we should do -- but the current article is clearly WRONG. Maybe do a RfC?

I'm glad to see this is getting some discussion, thanks to Ghmyrtle. Best, Pete Tillman ( talk) 03:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC) reply

I would suggest to eaither split it up in "Greenland desert", "Siberian desert" (perhaps adding footnotes to explain that they are technically deserts). Using the same logic that groups deserts in Greenland, Canada and Siberia together with could fuse the Somali and Sahara deserts to the Arabian and Persian deserts. Dentren | ^Talk 19:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC) reply

I agree with Dentren. There is no 'Arctic Desert' as it is mostly ocean, it makes no sense. Ubertoaster ( talk) 10:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC) reply

According to this [ [1]] picture in Commons, there is no place in continental Europe which would get under 300 mm rain yearly. Only the northernmost islands qualify ( Franz Josef Land, and parts of Svalbard & Novaja Zemlja). But the main question is, can an ocean be desert. I'd say no, but what the sources say? Desert article starts like this: A desert is a landscape or region of land, and Arctic Ocean is most probably not land. 82.141.119.130 ( talk) 20:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC) reply

I agree that ocean can't be included. But there are some deserts in continental Europe, at least one in southeastern Spain if -250mm is considered http://www.aemet.es/es/serviciosclimaticos/datosclimatologicos/valoresclimatologicos?l=6325O&k=and -- Bentaguayre ( talk) 00:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC) reply

It's not only a matter of size, but also a matter of continuity. The alleged Arctic desert is not a single landmass, and the ice cover of the ocean varies throughout the year. For example, there's no permanent ice connection between Asia and North America, thus they are not the same landmass and therefore not the same desert. There's more continuity between the Sahara and the Arabian desert than there is between the Arctic desert areas. In fact, If we use the same method for describing the Afro-Asian deserts, then the entire belt of Asian deserts would be a single desert, together with the Sahara, which would make them the biggest desert - even bigger than Antarctica. As someone mentioned long ago, Northern Scandinavia has much more rain than 250 mm, which makes the map at Goeology.com wrong. I wonder if it was Geology.com who made up this alleged single Arctic desert? 109.57.129.179 ( talk) 07:31, 18 February 2019 (UTC) reply

Hi. Why only > 50000 km2 deserts? emijrp ( talk) 19:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC) reply

The Danakil Desert is also missing. It covers an area of about 100,000 square miles and is located in the Afar Triangle of Africa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:8B4B:40A0:FDD4:1800:8A57:D7D3 ( talk) 19:24, 2 August 2015 (UTC) reply

The Sechura Desert is missing. It has a size of 188000 km². I didn't add it as I don't know how to update the rankings (which would change) automatically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.231.136.188 ( talk) 15:54, 22 June 2013 (UTC) reply

As in the case of the Arctic, the full extension of Antarctica has been included as "desert". In fact, large areas of the continent are not deserts http://www.zonu.com/images/500X0/2009-11-18-11162/Antarctica-annual-precipitation.gif

The Arctic should be definitely excluded of the list, at least of the first ranks. Antartic desert should be properly measured.

-- Bentaguayre ( talk) 00:54, 15 July 2013 (UTC) reply

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I fail to see why the Australian desert is split into several ranges, whereas there are multiple deserts listed that have plenty of their own regions/ranges but are listed as a whole.

For example Sahara has several regions within it like Libyan Desert, Western Desert, Eastern Desert etc. This also goes for multiple other deserts on the list. If we treated Sahara same way as Australian it should be split up.

So in one case Australian desert is split up into several regions/ranges, but others are not. That is a big discrepancy that should be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alakagom ( talk • contribs) 12:27, 18 August 2018 (UTC) reply

There is a discrepancy between the area listed for the Artic Desert here and for the actual wiki entry.

The citation seems broken as well. 76.183.245.240 ( talk) 02:18, 31 December 2021 (UTC) reply