56.7°C: Study questions validity of Death Valley's world-record heat
Death Valley, California, holds the world record for the hottest temperature ever observed. It’s long been in dispute
Death Valley is the hottest place in North America during the summer months. The weather station at this barren desertscape in southern California routinely crests 50 degrees on a sweltering day.
It’s also home to the world’s hottest temperature ever reliably recorded. Or was it?
The 56.7°C (134°F) reading observed there on July 10, 1913, lives in the history books with a growing shadow of doubt surrounding its veracity.
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Death Valley’s Furnace Creek weather station is perfectly situated to record some of the hottest temperatures the atmosphere can produce.
Surrounded by open desert, the region experiences persistent sinking air and finds itself sheltered from moisture during the height of the summer season. The average daytime temperature here climbs to 47.4°C (117.4°F) during the month of July.
As the record books hold, a particularly brutal heat wave befell Death Valley in the middle of July 1913, sending temperatures to historic levels.
July 10 saw the world-record observation of 56.7°C (134°F), followed by equally jaw-dropping readings of 54.4°C (130°F) on July 12 and 55.0°C (131°F) on July 13.
But a recent study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society casts doubt on the truthfulness of those observations.
Based on an analysis of overall weather conditions and nearby observations, a group of researchers concluded that the first two weeks of July 1913 were “spuriously hot” at the Death Valley observation station, which was situated on a local ranch at the time.
The team found evidence that the world-record temperatures may have been improperly taken using uncalibrated equipment, “possibly taken from the veranda of the ranch house using a thermometer of unknown provenance,” the researchers concluded.
The team added: “It has simply been assumed that the reported temperature came from that shelter and was dutifully recorded by the ranch foreman at that time.”
It’s enough of a discrepancy that the trio of climate scientists argue that the World Meteorological Organization should discard the 56.7°C record and closely scrutinize the rest of that station’s readings.
What steps up if the current record is overturned? Death Valley would likely continue to hold the title of hosting Earth’s highest reliable air temperature even if the 1913 observation couldn’t stand up to the rigors of modern science.
These days, the site is home to a properly maintained weather station which has recorded two 54.4°C (130°F) observations in recent years: first on Aug. 16, 2020, and again on July 9, 2021. If experts certified these readings as accurate, they would share the revised world record.