Atacama Desert

One of the driest places on Earth, virtually devoid of life.

NASA · via Wikipedia: Atacama Desert · Public domain

Its high altitude, dry air, and lack of light pollution make it a premier site for astronomical observation.^[1] On the Pacific coast of South America, a desert plateau called the Atacama extends for 1600 km through northern Chile, lying to the west of the Andes mountain range.^[2] This region is the largest fog desert globally and the most arid non-polar desert, where the typical yearly precipitation measures roughly 15 mm.^[3]

Last updated 2026-10-07 from the source article.

Quick Facts

Biome: Deserts and xeric shrublands
Country: Chile

Facts from the source article.

Geography and history

The intermediate depression forms endorheic basins south of latitude 19°30'S, but north of that it drains into the Pacific.^[4] The extreme dryness is caused by the desert's location sandwiched between the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range; these two mountain chains are tall enough to block moisture from both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, producing a rain shadow on two sides.^[3] The aridity is further strengthened by the cool Humboldt Current flowing northward and the South Pacific anticyclone.^[3] To its north, the desert meets Peru, and to its south, it borders the Chilean Matorral ecoregion.^[1]

The coast's primary topographical feature is the Coastal Cliff of northern Chile.^[4]

What the cited sources add

The Monique Bos account notes that birds are probably the largest animal group in the Atacama, with Humboldt penguins nesting in desert cliffs along the coast.^[5] Bos also states that the viscacha, a relative of the chinchilla, lives in parts of the desert.^[5] The "Exploring the Atacama" source describes the desert as a sparsely populated, virtually rainless plateau running from the Pacific to the Andes.^[6] That same source notes the Atacama has been chosen as a good site to test the prototype of a future lunar rover.^[6]

The BBC News report from 2011 states that a large dump of snow fell on the hyper-arid Atacama desert.^[7]

References

Wikipedia, "Atacama Desert" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bustos, "Parque Astronómico de Atacama: An Ideal Site for Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Mid-Infrared Astronomy", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2014, p. 1126; Navarro-Gonzalez, "Mars-Like Soils in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the Dry Limit of Microbial Life", Science, 7 November 2003, p. 1018–1021 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Atacama Desert" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The New York Times Almanac", Penguin Books, 2006, p. 456; Rundel, "Physical Geography of South America", Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 158–183 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Atacama Desert" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Climatological observations and predicted sublimation rates at Lake Hoare, Antarctica", Journal of Climate, 1988, p. 715–728; "The Physical Geography of South America", Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 160; Mckay, "Temperature and Moisture Conditions for Life in the Extreme Arid Region of the Atacama Desert: Four Years of Observations Including the El Niño of 1997–1998", Astrobiology, 2003, p. 393–406; "The desert biome", University of California Museum of Paleontology (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Atacama Desert" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Quezada, "Efectos de la tectónica y el clima en la configuración morfológica del relieve costero del norte de Chile", Andean Geology, 2010, p. 78–109; Armijo, "Coupled tectonic evolution of Andean orogeny and global climate", Earth-Science Reviews, 2015, p. 1–35; Evenstar, "Geomorphic surfaces and supergene enrichment in Northern Chile", EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, May 2014, p. 11126 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Monique Bos, "Animals that live in the Atacama Desert", Paw Nation. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
"Exploring the Atacama", yes. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
"Hyper-Arid Atacama Desert Hit By Snow", BBC News, 7 July 2011. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Atacama Desert (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.