Death Valley temperature rises to 54.4C –
possibly the hottest ever reliably recorded
The United States National Weather Service’s automated
station at Furnace Creek in California hit the extreme high at 3:41pm on Sunday
Graham
Readfearn
@readfearn Email
Mon 17 Aug
2020 07.08 BSTLast modified on Mon 17 Aug 2020 07.09 BST
A
temperature of 54.4C – or 129.9F – has been recorded in Death Valley,
California, in what some extreme weather watchers believe could be the hottest
reading ever reliably recorded on the planet.
The United
States National Weather Service’s automated weather station at Furnace Creek
near the border with Nevada hit the extreme high at 3:41pm on Sunday afternoon,
a statement said.
“This
observed high temperature is considered preliminary and not yet official,” a
statement from NWS Las Vegas said.
“If verified,
this will be the hottest temperature officially verified since July of 1913,
also at Death Valley.”
If the
temperature reading is verified, it would beat the previous hottest August day
for the United States.
Death
Valley’s all-time record high, according to the World Meteorological
Organization, is 134F (56.7°C) taken on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch. That
reading still stands as the hottest ever recorded on the planet’s surface,
according to the WMO.
The Death
Valley 1913 reading was installed as the planet’s hottest after a 2013 WMO
investigation dismissed a 58C temperature supposedly recorded in Libya in
September 1922.
A committee
concluded the Libya reading was likely wrong with human-error, the type of
thermometer used and inconsistencies with other temperatures in the region all
contributing to that temperature being struck off.
But
Christopher Burt, from private US meteorological service and who prompted the
investigation into the Libya record, has also challenged the legitimacy of the
1913 Death Valley readings saying they were “essentially not possible from a
meteorological perspective.”
Speaking to
the Washington Post, Prof Randy Cerveny, of Arizona State University and who
leads a WMO group that maintains an archive of climate extremes, said of the
new Death Valley temperature reading: “Everything I’ve seen so far indicates
that is a legitimate observation.”
He was
recommending the WMO “preliminarily accept the observation” but that the
reading would be examined in detail in the coming weeks.
The only
other WMO-verified temperature record higher than those taken at Death Valley
are from July 1931 at Kebili in Tunisia, where a reading of 131F (55C) was
taken.
But like
many older temperature readings, this too has been challenged.
Some
extreme weather watchers believe the most recent Death valley reading could –
in time – be verified as the hottest ever reliably recorded on the planet.
Bob Henson,
a meteorologist, told a blog of the American Geophysical Union: “It’s quite
possible the Death Valley high set a new global heat record. The extreme nature
of the surrounding weather pattern makes such a reading plausible, so the case
deserves a solid review.
“There are
nagging questions about the validity of even hotter reports from Death Valley
in 1913 and Tunisia in 1931. What we can say with high confidence is that, if
confirmed, this is the highest temperature observed on Earth in almost a
century.”
Prof James
Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, has taken
part in WMO efforts to check temperature readings.
He said the
Death Valley reading would need to be checked and verified before any record
could be confidently declared. Checks would be made of the instruments to make
sure there had been no changes at the Death Valley site, which is close to a
visitors’ centre at Furnace Creek.
He said:
“There will be a lot of cross-checking to make sure that that value is
correct.”
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