When you picture a desert, you probably imagine a vast, empty landscape far from any water. But surprisingly, some of the driest places on Earth lie right beside the ocean. Both the Atacama, in Chile, and the Namib, in southern Africa, stretch along coastlines. So how did these extreme deserts form in places bordered by so much water?
There are three main factors that allow deserts form next to oceans, David Kreamer, a hydrologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Live Science: how air moves vertically, how air moves horizontally, and how mountain ranges interact with air moisture.
