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Death Valley: Long the The hottest place on earthAnd Death Valley Sunday put a loud exclamation mark on a record warm summer baking nearly the entire world by courting some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, meteorologists said.
The National Weather Service said temperatures in Death Valley, which runs along part of central California’s border with Nevada, reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53.33 degrees Celsius) Sunday in the aptly named Furnace Creek.
Randy Severny of the World Meteorological Organization, the body recognized as the world’s record-keeper, said the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 F (56.67 C) in July 1913 at Furnace Creek. Temperatures of 130 F (54.44 C) or higher have been recorded on Earth a few times, mostly in Death Valley.
“With global warming, these temperatures are becoming more likely,” Severny, a records coordinator for the World Meteorological Organization, said in an email. Long term: Global warming is causing extreme temperatures to rise and become more frequent. Short term: This particular weekend is being driven by a very strong edge in the upper level of high pressure over the western United States.”
Furnace Creek is an unincorporated community within Death Valley National Park. It is home to the park’s visitor center, which includes a digital thermometer popular with tourists. On Sunday afternoon, dozens of people gathered at a thermometer—some jokingly wearing fur coats—hoping to snap a photo with a temperature reading that would shock their friends and family.
This digital thermometer reached 130 degrees at one point on Sunday, but it’s not an official reading. The National Weather Service said the highest temperature recorded on Sunday was 128 F (53.3 C) – a high that is unlikely to be surpassed as the sun goes down.
A few miles away in the Badwater Basin – the lowest point in North America at 282 feet (85.95 meters) below sea level – tourists took selfies and walked briefly along white salt flats flanked by sand-colored mountains as wisps of cloud crawl over it. Meteorologists say thin cloud cover likely kept temperatures from reaching potential record highs.
William Cadwallader lives in Las Vegas, where temperatures reached 116 F (46.67 C) on Sunday, near an all-time high of 117 degrees. But Cadwallader said he’d been visiting Death Valley during the summer for years to say it was in the hottest place on Earth.
He said, “I just want to go to a place, kind of like Mount Everest, to say, you know, I did it.”
The heat wave is just one part of the severe weather hitting the US over the weekend. Five people were killed in Pennsylvania on Saturday when heavy rains caused a flash flood that swept away several cars. A 9-month-old baby and a two-year-old girl remained missing. In Vermont, authorities expressed concern about landslides as rain continued to fall after days of flooding.
The extreme temperatures in Death Valley come amid a wave of hot weather that has put nearly a third of Americans under some type of heat alert, watch, or warning. Heatwaves aren’t as visually dramatic as other natural disasters, but experts say they are much deadlier. A heat wave in parts of the South and Midwest killed more than a dozen people last month.
Residents in the western United States have long been accustomed to extreme temperatures, and the heat appeared to have led to minimal disturbances in California over the weekend. Local governments have opened cooling centers for people who do not have access to air conditioners to keep cool. The heat has forced the cancellation of horse racing on the opening weekend of the California State Fair as officials urged fair-goers to stay hydrated and seek disbelief inside one of the seven air-conditioned buildings.
Temperatures in Phoenix hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit (45.56 degrees Celsius) on Sunday, the 17th straight day of 110 degrees or higher. The record is 18 days, set in June 1974. Phoenix is on track to smash that record on Tuesday, said Gabriel Loguero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Heat records are being broken across the southern United States, from California to Florida. But it’s much more than that. It’s all over the world, with devastating heat hitting Europe along with dramatic floods in the northeastern United States, India, Japan and China.
For nearly the entire month of July, the world has been in hot uncharted territory, according to a University of Maine climate analyst.
June was also the hottest on record, according to several weather agencies. Scientists say there’s a good chance that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, with measurements dating back to the mid-19th century.
Death Valley dominates the global heat records. In the valley, not only is it hot, it stays brutally warm.
Some meteorologists have questioned the accuracy of Death Valley’s 110-year-old hot temperature record, with weather historian Christopher Burt disputing it on several grounds, which he explained in a blog post a few years ago.
The highest recorded temperatures are 134 F in 1913 in Death Valley and 131 F (55 C) in Tunisia in July 1931. Burt, a weather historian for The Weather Company, finds error in both of these measurements and lists 130 F (54.4 C). ) in July 2021 in Death Valley as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
“130 degrees is very rare if not unique,” Burt said.
In July 2021 and August 2020, Death Valley recorded a reading of 130 F (54.4 C), but both are still awaiting confirmation. Scientists haven’t found any problems yet, but they haven’t finished the analysis, said Ross Voss, NOAA’s chief of climate analysis.
Burt said there are other places similar to Death Valley that might be too hot, like Iran’s Lut Desert, but like Death Valley it’s uninhabited, so no one takes action there. The difference, he said, is that someone decided to set up an official weather station in Death Valley in 1911.
The combination of long-term human-caused climate change from burning coal, oil, and natural gas is making the world hotter by the decade, with ups and downs year after year. Many of these fluctuations result from the normal El Nino and La Niña cycles. The El Niño cycle, the warming of part of the Pacific Ocean changes the world’s climate, adding more heat to already high temperatures.
Scientists like Vose say most of the record warming Earth is now experiencing is due to human-caused climate change, in part because El Niño began only a few months ago and is still weak to moderate. Its peak is not expected until winter, so scientists expect next year to be even hotter than this year.
The National Weather Service said temperatures in Death Valley, which runs along part of central California’s border with Nevada, reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53.33 degrees Celsius) Sunday in the aptly named Furnace Creek.
Randy Severny of the World Meteorological Organization, the body recognized as the world’s record-keeper, said the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 F (56.67 C) in July 1913 at Furnace Creek. Temperatures of 130 F (54.44 C) or higher have been recorded on Earth a few times, mostly in Death Valley.
“With global warming, these temperatures are becoming more likely,” Severny, a records coordinator for the World Meteorological Organization, said in an email. Long term: Global warming is causing extreme temperatures to rise and become more frequent. Short term: This particular weekend is being driven by a very strong edge in the upper level of high pressure over the western United States.”
Furnace Creek is an unincorporated community within Death Valley National Park. It is home to the park’s visitor center, which includes a digital thermometer popular with tourists. On Sunday afternoon, dozens of people gathered at a thermometer—some jokingly wearing fur coats—hoping to snap a photo with a temperature reading that would shock their friends and family.
This digital thermometer reached 130 degrees at one point on Sunday, but it’s not an official reading. The National Weather Service said the highest temperature recorded on Sunday was 128 F (53.3 C) – a high that is unlikely to be surpassed as the sun goes down.
A few miles away in the Badwater Basin – the lowest point in North America at 282 feet (85.95 meters) below sea level – tourists took selfies and walked briefly along white salt flats flanked by sand-colored mountains as wisps of cloud crawl over it. Meteorologists say thin cloud cover likely kept temperatures from reaching potential record highs.
William Cadwallader lives in Las Vegas, where temperatures reached 116 F (46.67 C) on Sunday, near an all-time high of 117 degrees. But Cadwallader said he’d been visiting Death Valley during the summer for years to say it was in the hottest place on Earth.
He said, “I just want to go to a place, kind of like Mount Everest, to say, you know, I did it.”
The heat wave is just one part of the severe weather hitting the US over the weekend. Five people were killed in Pennsylvania on Saturday when heavy rains caused a flash flood that swept away several cars. A 9-month-old baby and a two-year-old girl remained missing. In Vermont, authorities expressed concern about landslides as rain continued to fall after days of flooding.
The extreme temperatures in Death Valley come amid a wave of hot weather that has put nearly a third of Americans under some type of heat alert, watch, or warning. Heatwaves aren’t as visually dramatic as other natural disasters, but experts say they are much deadlier. A heat wave in parts of the South and Midwest killed more than a dozen people last month.
Residents in the western United States have long been accustomed to extreme temperatures, and the heat appeared to have led to minimal disturbances in California over the weekend. Local governments have opened cooling centers for people who do not have access to air conditioners to keep cool. The heat has forced the cancellation of horse racing on the opening weekend of the California State Fair as officials urged fair-goers to stay hydrated and seek disbelief inside one of the seven air-conditioned buildings.
Temperatures in Phoenix hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit (45.56 degrees Celsius) on Sunday, the 17th straight day of 110 degrees or higher. The record is 18 days, set in June 1974. Phoenix is on track to smash that record on Tuesday, said Gabriel Loguero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Heat records are being broken across the southern United States, from California to Florida. But it’s much more than that. It’s all over the world, with devastating heat hitting Europe along with dramatic floods in the northeastern United States, India, Japan and China.
For nearly the entire month of July, the world has been in hot uncharted territory, according to a University of Maine climate analyst.
June was also the hottest on record, according to several weather agencies. Scientists say there’s a good chance that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, with measurements dating back to the mid-19th century.
Death Valley dominates the global heat records. In the valley, not only is it hot, it stays brutally warm.
Some meteorologists have questioned the accuracy of Death Valley’s 110-year-old hot temperature record, with weather historian Christopher Burt disputing it on several grounds, which he explained in a blog post a few years ago.
The highest recorded temperatures are 134 F in 1913 in Death Valley and 131 F (55 C) in Tunisia in July 1931. Burt, a weather historian for The Weather Company, finds error in both of these measurements and lists 130 F (54.4 C). ) in July 2021 in Death Valley as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
“130 degrees is very rare if not unique,” Burt said.
In July 2021 and August 2020, Death Valley recorded a reading of 130 F (54.4 C), but both are still awaiting confirmation. Scientists haven’t found any problems yet, but they haven’t finished the analysis, said Ross Voss, NOAA’s chief of climate analysis.
Burt said there are other places similar to Death Valley that might be too hot, like Iran’s Lut Desert, but like Death Valley it’s uninhabited, so no one takes action there. The difference, he said, is that someone decided to set up an official weather station in Death Valley in 1911.
The combination of long-term human-caused climate change from burning coal, oil, and natural gas is making the world hotter by the decade, with ups and downs year after year. Many of these fluctuations result from the normal El Nino and La Niña cycles. The El Niño cycle, the warming of part of the Pacific Ocean changes the world’s climate, adding more heat to already high temperatures.
Scientists like Vose say most of the record warming Earth is now experiencing is due to human-caused climate change, in part because El Niño began only a few months ago and is still weak to moderate. Its peak is not expected until winter, so scientists expect next year to be even hotter than this year.
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