(Burt was a member of the WMO team that made the determination.) With the Libya record abandoned, the official world record was given to a 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7☌) measurement taken at Death Valley on July 10, 1913. In 2013, WMO officially decertified the official all-time hottest temperature in world history, a 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit (58.0☌) reading from Al Azizia, Libya, in 1923. “If Friday’s observation passes an investigation (instrument calibration, etc.) then, yes, this is a new reliably measured global extreme heat record,” Burt wrote by email.īut the observation will not count as an official world record. (Image credit: NOAA) Official world record remains 134☏ at Furnace Creek in 1913 Hourly maximum temperature at Death Valley National Park’s Furnace Creek Visitor Center July 6-12, 2021. A day that hits 125 degrees today probably would have only been as high as 122-123 degrees before 1980.” Figure 1. “I figure that most summer maximums at Death Valley today are a couple of degrees higher because of the poorer station exposure. The result is higher temperature readings during the afternoon comparably,” Reid wrote. Since the station is above a bare and sandy surface, hot air along the ground during afternoon sunshine is less effectively mixed away from the instrumentation. “An increase in vegetation and some man-made structures not too far south of the station have resulted in poorer ventilation through the station area. Fortunately, we’ll have excellent independent verification of this year’s measurement thanks to a temporary thermometer set up at the site in May by Campbell Scientific.Ĭlimatologist William Reid, an expert on Death Valley meteorology who has written extensively about the site, cautioned that an increase in vegetation and structures built in the vicinity of the Furnace Creek site in recent decades has allowed the station to record hotter temperatures. (See the raw high-resolution Furnace Creek data here by choosing a time up to six days in the past from the drop-down menu, then choosing “Decoded Data”.) WMO has not yet certified last year’s 129.9 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4☌) reading on Augat Furnace Creek as valid, so there may be a long wait.
Two possible areas of concern are that the temperatures at Furnace Creek showed a steep jump during the afternoon, and the nearby Stovepipe Wells station was considerably cooler, topping out at 122.6 degrees Fahrenheit (50.3☌). Friday’s measurement will have to undergo review by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) before being declared officially valid.
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