Snow cloaks Atacama, the world's driest desert

June 27, 2025

Snow cloaks Atacama, the world's driest desert

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Parts of the world's most arid desert, the Atacama in northern Chile, woke up to the rare spectacle of snow.

Residents of the world's driest desert, the Atacama in northern Chile, woke up Thursday to a jaw-dropping spectacle: its famous lunar landscape blanketed in snow.

"INCREDIBLE! The Atacama Desert, the world's most arid, is COVERED IN SNOW," the ALMA observatory, situated 2,900 meters (9,500 feet) above sea level, wrote on X, alongside a video of vast expanses covered in a dusting of white.

The observatory added that while snow is common on the nearby Chajnanator Plateau, situated at over 5,000 meters and where its gigantic telescope is situated, it had not had snow at its main facility in a decade.

University of Santiago climatologist Raul Cordero told AFP that it was too soon to link the snow to climate change but said that climate modeling had shown that "this type of event, meaning precipitation in the Atacama Desert, will likely become more frequent."

The Atacama, home to the world's darkest skies, has for decades been the go-to location for the world's most advanced telescopes.

This handout picture released by the ALMA Observatory in the Atacama Desert shows snowfall at dawn, a phenomenon that had not occurred in 10 years at this altitude in the driest desert in the world.

The ALMA telescope, which was developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is widely recognized as being the most powerful.

漏 2025 AFP

Citation: Snow cloaks Atacama, the world's driest desert (2025, June 27) retrieved 28 June 2025 from /news/2025-06-cloaks-atacama-world-driest.html

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