Atacama Desert,Chile:

The Atacama Desert  is a plateau in, covering a 1,000-kilometre (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is the driest hot desert in the world. The Atacama occupies 105,000 square kilometres (41,000 sq mi) composed mostly of salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava flows towards the Andes.The Atacama Desert ecoregion, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), extends from a few kilometers south of the Peru–Chile border to about 30° south latitude. To the north lies the Peruvian Sechura Desert ecoregion, whilst to the south is the Chilean Matorral ecoregion. The National Geographic Society, by contrast, considers the coastal area of southern Peru to be part of the Atacama Desert. It includes in this definition the deserts south of the Ica Region in Peru. To the east lies the less arid Central Andean dry puna ecoregion. The drier portion of this ecoregion is located south of the Loa River between the parallel Sierra Vicuña Mackenna and Cordillera Domeyko. To the north of the Loa lies the Pampa del Tamarugal.The Atacama Desert is commonly known as the driest place in the world, especially the surroundings of the abandoned Yungay town (in Antofagasta Region, Chile).[10] The average rainfall is about 15 millimetres (0.59 in) per year, although some parts receive as little as 1 millimetre (0.04 in) to 3 millimetres (0.12 in) in a year. Moreover, some weather stations in the Atacama have never received rain. Periods of up to four years have been registered with no rainfall in the central sector, delimited by the cities of Antofagasta, Calama and Copiapó, in Chile. Evidence suggests that the Atacama may not have had any significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971. It is so arid that mountains that reach as high as 6,885 metres (22,589 ft) are completely free of glaciers and, in the southern part from 25°S to 27°S, may have been glacier-free throughout the Quaternary, though permafrost extends down to an altitude of 4,400 metres (14,400 ft) and is continuous above 5,600 metres (18,400 ft). Studies by a group of British scientists have suggested that some river beds have been dry for 120,000 years. However, some locations in the Atacama receive a marine fog known locally as the camanchaca, providing sufficient moisture for hypolithic algae, lichens and even some cacti—the genus Copiapoa is notable among these. Geographically, the aridity can be explained by the following reasons:

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