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90 years ago today—on September 13, 1922—a temperature of 58ºC (136.4ºF) was recorded at El Azizia in Italian North Africa (modern-day Libya). That reading was, and has been ever since, the officially recognized hottest surface temperature ever recorded on the planet. It's arguably the most famous and iconic record in the world of weather; it's cited in countless textbooks and official documents; a Google search on the subject returns a bazillion hits.
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Death Valley, California
The new heavyweight champion of the world (of weather records, that is)
The new heavyweight champion of the world (of weather records, that is)
And as of this morning, Libya has been stripped of its title; that record is no longer valid.
A special investigative committee made up of international atmospheric scientists and weather experts convened by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spent many months researching the validity of the record, and finally announced their findings this morning in a peer-reviewed article published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), summarizing as follows:
[T]he WMO World Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes has rejected this temperature extreme of 58ºC as the highest temperature officially recorded on the planet.The article then goes on to conclude:
The WMO assessment is that the highest recorded surface temperature of 56.7°C (134°F) was measured on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch (Death Valley) CA USA.So there you have it: California is as of today officially the hottest place on Earth. And now, should you be a true weather nerd or the type of person who's just generally interested in such things, the slightly convoluted story of how all this came about—complete with the prominent roles in the timing of the record's de-certification played by the Arab Spring uprisings and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi...
