Sahara Desert

Earth - region

The Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى‎, sa'hrāʾ al-Kubrā, 'the Great Desert') is the largest hot desert and third largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its combined surface area of 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi)—accounting for substrates such as the Libyan Desert and the Sudan region—is comparable to the respective land areas of China and the United States. The desert comprises much of the land found within North Africa, excluding the fertile coastal region situated against the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlas Mountains of the Mahgreb, and the Nile Valley of Egypt and Sudan. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea in the east, girting the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually transitions to a coastal plain. To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna that comprises the northern region of central and western Sub-Saharan Africa.

Many of its sand dunes reach over 180 metres (590 ft) in height. Its name is derived from the plural Arabic language word for desert (صحارى ṣaḥārā [3][4] [ˈsˤɑħɑːrɑː]).

The Sahara region was the place for two of the four Space elevators that existed during 2100 - 2210 OTT (Number 4 still exists as a tourist attraction and historic monument)

The Sahara region was also significant as it was the site of the first recorded Saran landing in Ancient Egyptian times) about 11,000 years ago