29 Mar 2024
Iranian city soars to record 129 degrees: Near hottest on Earth in modern measurements
Washington Post - A city in southwest Iran posted the countrys hottest temperature ever recorded Thursday afternoon, and may have tied the world record for the most extreme high temperature.

Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at Frenchmeteorological agency MeteoFrance,posted to Twitterthat the city of Ahvaz soared to 53.7C (128.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Kapikian said the temperature is a new absolute national record of reliable Iranian heat and that it was the hottest temperature ever recorded in June over mainland Asia. Irans previous hottest temperature was 127.4.

Weather Undergrounds website indicatesthe temperature in Ahvaz climbed even higher, hitting 129.2 degrees at both 4:51 and 5 p.m. local time.

Temperature observations from Ahvaz, Iran, Thursday afternoon, June 29. (Weather Underground)
If that 129.2 degrees reading is accurate, it would arguably tie the hottest temperature ever measured on Earth in modern times.

Christopher Burt, a weather historian for Weather Underground, has exhaustively analyzed world temperature extremes and determinedthe 129.2 degree readings posted in Mitribah, Kuwait on July 21, 2016, and Death Valley, Calif., on June 30, 2013,are the hottest credible temperature measurements that existin modern records.

Officially, Death Valley set the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth on July 10, 1913, soaring to 134 degrees (57 Celsius). But Burtposted a devastating critiqueof that measurement in October 2016, concluding it was essentially not possible from a meteorological perspective, and that the weather observer committed errors.

For the 129.2 degree-reading Ahvaz posted on Weather Underground to stand and match the highest modern global temperature, it will require review by the World Meteorological Organization.

The scorching temperature reading was brought about by a dome of heat centered over the Middle East.

The excessively hot air over Ahvaz, a city of 1.1 million people, felt even more stifling due to high humidity. As the temperature climbed into the high 120s, the dew point, a measure of humidity, peaked in the low 70s; a high level for the desert location (due to air flow from the Persian Gulf, to the south). The heat index a measure of how hot it feels factoring in the humidity exceeded 140 degrees. This combination of heat and humidity was so extreme that it wasbeyond levels the heat index was designed to compute.

In the Persian Gulf city of Jask, Iran, about 800 miles southeast of Ahvaz, the humidity was even more suffocating. Thedew point on Wednesday morning hit 91.4 degrees. Dew points above 90 are quite rare. The highest dew point ever measuredon Earth is 95 degrees (35 Celsius), set at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003.

Thursday marked the second straight day of record heat in Ahvaz. On Wednesday,it hit 127.2 degrees(52.9 Celsius), breaking the record for Irans hottest June temperature, only to be exceeded the next day.

These Iranian temperature extremes come just a month after several locations in the Middle East recorded their hottest May temperatures during another exceptional heat wave.

On May 28, the western Pakistani town of Turbat hit 128.3 degrees (53.5 Celsius), tying the all-time highest temperature in that country and the world record temperature for May,according to Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters.

At the same timeMasters reportedthat at the military base of Konarak in eastern Iran, the temperature reached 127 degrees, destroying the record of the highest temperature ever recorded in May in Iran (50.5C in Bostan in May 1999).

All of these record-breaking temperatures in recent years, including Thursdays reading in Ahvaz as well as those set in Kuwait and Death Valley in 2016 and 2013, represent temperature extremes consistent with what climate scientists expect to see in a warming world.

The National Academy of Sciencespublished a report in 2016that said worsening heat waves are among the weather events that can be most easily connected to human-caused climate change.

Astudy published in the journal Nature Climate Change in 2015cautioned that by the end of the century, due to climate change, temperatures in the Middle East may become too hot for human survival.
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