What is the largest desert in the world?

Deserts are defined by how little precipitation they receive, not temperature, and by that measure Antarctica qualifies overwhelmingly, since its interior receives astonishingly little snowfall each year. Because it's so cold that almost none of its accumulated ice ever melts, the little precipitation that does fall has simply piled up over hundreds of thousands of years rather than disappearing like rain does elsewhere.

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert and often the intuitive answer, and the Gobi is a well-known cold desert, but both receive more moisture turnover and are considerably smaller than Antarctica under the strict definition.

This surprising classification upends the everyday assumption that "desert" means hot and sandy, when the defining factor is dryness — and Antarctica is in many ways the driest place on the planet.