Last year, two spots beat Death Valley for Earth's hottest surface temperature: the Lut Desert in Iran and the Sonoran Desert along the Mexican-U.S. border, both reaching a sizzling 80.8°C (177.4°F). ScienceMagArchives
Death Valley holds the record for the highest air temperature on the planet: On 10 July 1913, temperatures at the aptly named Furnace Creek area in the California desert reached a blistering 56.7°C . Average summer temperatures, meanwhile, often rise above 45°C .
More than 11,000 World Meteorological Organization manned and automated weather stations measure air temperatures in the shade, in ventilated hutches about 1.5 meters above ground level. But vast swaths of Earth's surface, especially in remote regions, lack these instruments, leaving them out of the record books.
Surface temperatures tend to run hotter than the air above, especially on sunny days when surfaces are heated both by air and the Sun's radiant energy."Think of your car sitting in a parking lot on a summer day and how the handle burns your fingers. Or the sand burning your feet at the beach," says ecologist David Mildrexler of the conservation organization Eastern Oregon Legacy Lands.
Zhao and her colleagues uncovered other superlatives. The maximum temperature swing in a single day was 81.8°C , from –23.7°C to 58.1°C on 20 July 2006 in China's Qaidam Basin, a crescent-shaped depression hemmed in by mountains on the Tibetan Plateau. And the coldest spot on our planet? No big surprise: Antarctica. But a satellite reading of –110.9°C in 2016 is more than 20° chillier than the coldest air temperature recorded in 1983.
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