It is not always easy to define and differentiate the deserts and half deserts in the northeast of Africa accurately from each other. Deserts, half deserts and thorn bush savannah merge into one another, and a standardised naming is missing. The desert areas on the Somali peninsula do not belong to the Rift Valley, however also North Kenya has desert regions.

The Danakil is the largest and in every aspect the most extreme desert in the northeast of Africa.

There are two reasons for the droughts in this region. On one hand, these areas are under the influence of the northeast trade winds that transport dry air masses from the Arab peninsula and push away the humid equatorial air. On the other hand, the distinctive relief of the Rift Valley entails a strong differentiation of the amounts of precipitation. The precipitation amounts in lee situations are much smaller than in windward (luff) situations. Thus, the hyper arid Danakil basin is located in the lee of the Abyssinian Highland.

Three Desert Regions

The Danakil desert consists of three desert regions:

Chalbi desert

The first one is between Lake Turkana and the Kenyan Marsabit, their northern part is known under the local name of Chalbi desert. Close to Marsabit, there is a high volcanic massif with a mountain dew forest.

Kaisut desert

The Kaisut desert is located south of the Chalbi desert. The Somali peninsula drops from medium altitudes to the Indian Ocean and ascends at the northern edge up to more than 2,000 m. In front of it, a coastal desert extends to the Gulf of Aden.

Afar Triangle

The third desert region of Danakil-Somalia is the Afar Triangle with a surface of 150,000 km². It is limited in the west by the steep rock hills of the Abyssinian Plateau, in the east by the Red Sea and in the south by a line which leads from the region Awash to the Somali coastal town Berbera. The northern point of the Afar Triangle is located in the Eritrean port of Massawa. The Afar Triangle belongs to the geologically most active regions of the earth. In the Afar Triangle the earth’s crust over the “plume” has broken apart in a star-shaped way. Three tectonic plates meet one another, which normally only happens at the ground of the oceans. During millions of years, the internal earth pressure opened three ditches that drift apart at the Danakil basin in the Afar Triangle in angles of 120°. Two of the ditches are filled with sea water: the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The third and youngest disruption is the Rift Valley. It stretches from the Afar Triangle to the south by the savannahs of East Africa until Mozambique, where it disappears in the Indian Ocean.

The Dallol, the deepest point of the Danakil basin, is located at 120 m a.s.l. Hot springs extract salt from the soil, deposit it and thereby colour the landscape intensely. Around the water springs white chimneys are formed that are up to several meters high. These chimneys are surrounded by light yellow crusts where  intensely green, clear water gathers. Every spring gushes just for a few weeks. The old salt deposits dry out, fade or turn into a rust-brown crust. Possibly, million of years ago, the Red Sea entered into the Afar Triangle and evaporated in the heat, so that the salt was left. The salt layer at Dallol is said to measure over 1.000 m.