Arabian Desert Climate

Arabian desert or Sandy desert as it is popularly known, is one of the biggest deserts of the world. When you talk about the Arabian countries, the first thing that strikes your mind is the vast Arabian desert. The Arabian desert consists of the Arabian Peninsula, covering more than 1,447,7955 miles. The Arabian desert is also home to one of the largest sand bodies in the world "Rub' al-Khali". The Rub Al-Khali or commonly referred to as the empty quarter, is a sedimentary basin consisting of most of the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula which includes southern Saudi Arabia, and some areas of Oman, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. As a geographical region you will think of it as inhabitable to humans, but you are wrong. Its climate and surroundings have been home to the human population for more than 3000 years and has also provided and still provides natural resources like oil, natural gas, phosphates, sulfur and ground water.

The latitude of Arabian desert is spread across 22° from the 12th to the 34th parallel on the northern side, much of the Arabian desert is located to the north of tropic of cancer, hence the Arabian desert is also sometimes referred as a tropical desert. The climate of the Arabian desert is hyper arid, it receives rainfall on an average of 1.38 inches annually. In summer, the great desert experiences a temperature of 104° to 122° Fahrenheit and in the winter the temperature goes down to 41° to 59° Fahrenheit. The climatic conditions affects a part of Xeric and shrub lands biome and the paleartic ecozone.

Arabian Desert Plants

Due to the dryness of the desert many plants can't survive there, but that doesn't mean that you won't find any vegetation in the great Arabian desert.

Prosopis Cineraria
Prosopis cineraria, popularly known as ghaf, is a medium-sized tree and is one of the few plants known to survive in this hot and harsh climate. It is also found in the deserts of India, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Date Palms
Date palms are palm trees with feather like leaves which can be green or gray in color. It also gives out an edible fruit. Date palms have been grown for hundreds of years in the Arabian desert and has been used as a food source for people and animals.

Juniper
There are more than 70 species of juniper plants found. The term juniper is given to various evergreen, coniferous trees or shrubs found in the desert regions of the middle east, African and central America. The fruits of these trees are an important food source for various mammals and birds.

Caper
Its botanical name is capparis spinosa. Caper was grown first on the Island of Capri. This plant can survive in the driest of regions and so is one of the few plants which you can see growing well in the Arabian desert.

Arabian Desert Facts

• The Arabian desert covers an area of more than 137987.90 sq. miles, which makes it one of the biggest and continuous sand bodies on the face of the earth.
• This great desert largely lies within Saudi Arabia, but it is too vast to fit in one country, portions of the Arabian desert are also found in Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Yemen.
• The desert climate is often referred to as a hyper arid climate. It receives extremely low rainfall and is extremely dry. While the day temperatures are more than 50°C, the night can drop down to 14°C, the temperature in winter can drop down to 0°C sometimes.
• Even in such extreme weather conditions, some animal species have made the Arabian desert their home, these include insects, lizards, snakes, large range of reptiles such as the monitor lizard, and birds which include the lanner falcon.
• Desert vegetation is sparse but it's thriving, you can see a number of plants who have adapted themselves with the harsh conditions of this desert.

So, this was all that was needed to know about the Arabian desert climate, recently this great desert has faced a lot of destruction due to human activities. Constant human interference with nature's activities is a big threat to all the natural surroundings in our planet. We should try hard to preserve these natural resources to maintain the ecological balance in our home planet.