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The Atacama Desert is a vast, arid region in South America that stretches along the western coast and is one of the driest places on Earth. It matters because its extreme conditions make it scientifically valuable for studying life in harsh environments and because it contains significant mineral deposits, including copper and lithium, that are important to the global economy.
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The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama [ataˈkama]) is a desert plateau on the Pacific coast of South America, stretching along a 1,600-kilometre-long (1,000-mile) strip of land in northern Chile, west of the Andes. It covers an area of 105,000 km (41,000 mi), rising to 128,000 km (49,000 mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included.
The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert in the world and the largest fog desert on Earth. Extreme aridity results from its position between two mountain chains—the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range—of sufficient height to block moisture from both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, creating a two-sided rain shadow. The cool, north-flowing Humboldt Current and the South Pacific anticyclone reinforce this effect. Average annual rainfall is around 15 mm (0.6 in) per year, and some weather stations in the desert have never recorded rain. Evidence suggests the desert may have received no significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971, and hyper-arid conditions date back at least to the Miocene.