My friends and I visited the Arabian Desert, Rub'al-Khali
in Saudi Arabia. It covers almost the whole of the Arabian Peninsula and lies
on 900 000 square miles of land making it the largest desert in Asia. The
Arabian Desert is found on the extreme parts of southwestern Asia and as a
result, it has a higher affinity with Somalia and Ethiopia of Africa than other
regions of Asia.
From the air, we could see blurry mountain ranges as well
as reddish sand dunes that stretched to the horizon. I explained to my friends
that these escarpments and dunes were as a result of ephemeral streamflow found
in deserts and the partial plant cover. The desert was formed approximately six
million years ago when a rift occurrence in the earth’s crust led to the
separation of the Red Sea and the Arabian Peninsula. Western Arabia was
initially a part of Africa. The Red Sea now borders the Arabian Desert to the
West while the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf are in the Southeast and East
respectively. Due to the surrounding large water bodies, the desert always
experiences an adjacent offshore oceanic current and depending on the season,
the currents may change to strong windstorms. The currents are usually either
extremely cold or hot, they can freeze or heat your body.
The Arabian Desert has mountainous highlands and erosion
has also uncovered few ranges in the region. Just like other deserts, the Arabian
is covered by plateaus. Below the plateaus are broad plains with smooth and
steady surfaces. The drainage channels in the desert are dry and the flow of
water can only be observed when there are extremely heavy rains. River Tigris and Euphrates perennially flow
in the desert. We noted that sand never
occurred in flat sheets. As aforementioned it either accumulated in dunes of
varying sizes or ridges. Walking on the topographic surfaces and observing the
bluffs in the desert was an overwhelming experience.
Reference
Rub Al-Khali - LookLex
Encyclopaedia,
looklex.com/e.o/rub_al-khali.htm.
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