If you ask people where the hottest position on Earth is , most will reply “ Death Valley " . However , that ’s not necessarily true .
Furnace Creek in California ’s Death Valley holds the prescribed record for the highest air temperature on the planet , clocking a sear 56.7 ° degree centigrade ( 134.1 ° F ) on July 10 , 1913 . While somedispute the validityof the temperature recording ( and even if they do , the next record - circuit breaker is still Furnace Creek just nine years originally ) , that ’s the official hottest temperature concord to theWorld Meteorological Organization(WMO ) .
However , if we see at land airfoil temperature then two other locations are miles in advance of Death Valley . In a new study published inBulletin of the American Meteorological Society , scientists in the US used satellite datum to show that the Lut Desert in Iran and the Sonoran Desert in Mexico have fancy baking country control surface temperatures of 80.8 ° C ( 177.4 ° F ) in late decades .
A Earth’s surface temperature of -110.9 ° C ( -167.62 ° F ) in Antarctica was recorded as the lowest temperature read in the study , approximately 20 ° ascorbic acid lower than what was report by the WMO , which has the lowest temperature as -89.2 ° C ( -128.56 ° F ) . The biggest vacillation of temperature was found in the Qaidam Basin in China where the country open temperature was bump to have fluctuated by 81.8 ° C ( 147.3 ° farad ) in a single day , from -23.7 ° C ( -10.7 ° fluorine ) to 58.1 ° 100 ( 136.6 ° degree Fahrenheit ) .
Air temperature are recorded using over 10,000 weather stations across the world maintained by the WMO . Typically , the temperature is gauged using a Stevenson screen , a ventilate clean - painted corner that ’s lifted a few foot off the terra firma . This design allow air to flow through but avoids lineal sunlight that may skew the results .
In this new sketch , the researchers used an substitute method acting . Instead of mensurate air temperature , they measure how hot the actual ground surface was using data point from NASA ’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS ) onboard its Earth - observance artificial satellite . Along with assess estate surface temperature , MODIS gather data on the ocean and the lower atmosphere .
Measuring air temperature and land Earth’s surface temperature can give very different results , as this work evoke . Imagine you are on a beach on a summer ’s day : the sand beneath your feet is get to sense noticeably hot than the zephyr around your chest . This is because the land surface absorb moresolar radiation andretains more warmth . soil surface temperature can also be dictated by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and stuff of the landscape painting ; a big calamitous rock will draw more heat than white sand , for instance .
When scientiststalk about climate change , rising temperatures in general refer to the near - aerofoil air temperature , but researcher get laid relatively little about how climate alteration might be bear upon kingdom surface temperatures . The work author of this new inquiry suspect that the extreme temperatures documented in Iran ’s Lut Desert and Mexico’sSonoran Desertcould be a reflection of human - drive climate variety , but there is presently not enough data to divide it from natural variability .
" While the behavior of the air in reply to more anthropogenic discharge is well studied , the response of the land control surface under dissimilar discharge pathways is not well understood , " the researcher conclude . " It is hoped the future enquiry in this direction can shed light on not only how extremes have exchange in the past tense but how they will probably affect our planet in the future tense . "
