Our planet is full of contrasts. The variety of its geographical areas and its climates makes practically each region have its own particularities. Hence, today I review some of the most extreme places on Earth, analyzing some surprising data.
- The place with the highest temperature:
There are several candidates to be considered the warmest places on Earth, but the place with the highest temperature ever recorded is in Death Valley, a desert valley located in southeastern California in the Mojave Desert, United States, where on July 10, 1913, the thermometer reached 56.7°C.
- The coldest place:
The coldest place on Earth is located within Antarctica, the ice continent south of the planet, and reaches a temperature of -93°C, recorded on August 10, 2010, by a group of scientists, thus overcoming the previous −89.2°C recorded on July 31, 1983, at Vostok station.
- The driest place:
The Atacama Desert, in Chile, is very often cited as the driest place, since it receives only a tiny amount of rainfall, between 0.1 and 0.5 mm of rainfall per year, and in some specific points of this desert some areas have not received a drop of water more than 100 years ago. However, the least rainy place in the world is in Antarctica. In the region known as the McMurdo Dry Valleys, it is estimated that it has not rained for 2 million years (Antarctica is also the largest desert on our planet).
- The wettest place:
The village of Mawsynram, in Meghalaya, India, is the place which receives the highest rainfall, on average, every year it rains in more than 300 days. The inhabitants are totally used to it and the raindo not stop them in their daily routine. The high rainfall rate is due to air currents moving over the plains of Bangladesh, the collection of humidity advances northward and the clouds that thay form hit the rugged hills of Meghalaya, where they break.
The Colombian municipality of Lloró, in the department of Chocó, holds the title of being the wettest place in the world for its 13,300 mm annual rainfall. Although not continuously, because almost all the rain falls in the monsoon season (seasonal wind that is produced by the displacement of the equatorial belt). Its annual average rainfall is 11 cubic meters, and it is known that two thirds of the time it rains, it is during the day, but at night.
On the other hand, the mountain of Wai'ale'ale, on the Kauai island of Hawai'i, is the site of the world where it rains more days a year, adding up to about 350 days.
- The highest point:
With its 8.850 m altitude, Mount Everest (named after George Everest, a Welsh expert who took care of almost all the topography of India) is sometimes called "the roof of the world". Located in the heart of the Himalayas, between Nepal and Tibet, the top of this mountain stands for almost everyone as the highest point on the planet (the mountain also grows at a rate of 4 mm per year). Although if it is mountains, the 8.850 m of Everest does not place it as the highest; we have all been taught that Mount Everest, with that height, is the highest above sea level. But in reality, the highest mountain in the world is Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawai´i, in the Pacific Ocean. Mauna Kea, which is actually an inactive volcano, rises up to 4.205 m above sea level, but if measured from the bottom of the ocean to its top, its total height is almost 10.210 m, which makes it the highest mountain on the planet.
However, there are those who argue that the Chimborazo mountain, in Ecuador, with 6272 m high is the highest point because it is closer to outer space than Everest, due to the circumference of Earth, and since it is in the equator of the planet , its summit is at a higher level than Everest´s.
- The deepest point:
The lowest place on Earth is the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is actually a lake that lies between Jordan and Israel. Its name is because its waters have such a high level of salinity that no organism can develop in them. It is located 416.5 m below sea level.
But the deepest point of our planets is undoubtedly the Mariana Trench, which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, about 200 km east of the Mariana Islands. It has a crescent shape and measures about 2.550 km long and 69 km wide. Its maximum known depth is 10.994 m at the southern end of a small valley at its bottom, known as Challenger Deep. However, some measurements take their deepest point up to 11.034 meters.
- The oldest place on Earth:
It is the Nevrite area of Nuvvuagittuq, on the east coast of the Hudson Bay, in Canada. After an investigation and experiments that lasted seven years, the scientists discovered that the area has a history of about 4.280 million years, 250 million years more than what was believed, until then, was the oldest earth's crust sample on the planet.
- The farthest or most remote point:
The island of Tristan Da Cunha is an archipelago located in the South Atlantic, and one of the overseas territories of England. 2.816 kilometers from South Africa and 3.360 from South America, it is the most remote island inhabited (by the human being) island on the planet. It is very small, has no airport and only has 272 inhabitants. This place was occupied by England at the end of the 19th century.
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