News Environment

The most intense sunlight on Earth can be found in the Atacama Desert

Sunlight in the South American desert can occasionally rival the solar intensity on Venus

A photo of Lejía Lake with the volcanoes Aguas Calientes and Acamarachi in the background.

The volcanoes Aguas Calientes and Acamarachi loom over Lejía Lake, a salt lake on the high-altitude Altiplano plateau in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

Pawel Toczynski/The Image Bank/Getty Images

By Katherine Kornei

Forget Arizona or Florida — sun worshippers ought to head to the Atacama Desert in South America. It’s there that the sun’s rays on Earth are most intense, beating out places like Mount Everest and even, occasionally, rivaling the conditions on Venus, researchers report July 3 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.