Meteorologists Declare Libya's World Temperature Record Invalid

[News_Editor]

Meteorologists declare Libya's world temperature record invalid < br />

2012-09-14 19:07:33 GMT+7 (ICT)

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (BNO NEWS) -- Death Valley in California was on Thursday recognized as having posted the world's hottest temperature after an international team of experts ruled the previous record set in Libya was invalid due to the use of problematic instruments and an inexperienced observer.

The investigation began in early 2010 after a weather historian at the Weather Underground website asked Arizona State University to look into the accuracy of the 58.0 degrees Celsius (136.4 degrees Fahrenheit) that had been recorded at an Italian army base on September 13, 1922, near the town of El Azizia in present day Libya.

"There was some concern that that particular value might not have been recorded properly," said Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University President's Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. He also works at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in the field of extreme weather and climate.

"We formed a committee of absolute experts across the entire world in meteorology to look at this record," Cerveny said. "It was in essence playing detective. We were throwing up all the old records and all the information that we could find for how and exactly in what way was this measurement made back in 1922. And we found some pretty startling things."

The investigation revealed that the proper instrument had broken down a few days earlier, forcing the observer to use another instrument which used a combination of alcohol and mercury as its way of finding the temperature. "It is a very odd instrument and also very difficult to use properly," Cerveny said.

On top of that, the experts now believe the observer was inexperienced because of several errors he made. "We're pretty sure that the person that was tasked with taking the measurements using this instrument didn't know how to use it," Cerveny said. "We have some ideas about that simply from the log sheet that he looked at. When we looked at the log sheet, and we have the original 1922 log sheet from this particular set of observations, we found that the observer had put the numbers in the wrong column."

The experts also compared the observer's observations to surrounding locations and then further compared them to earlier and later observations at the same site. They were no match, and it is now believed that the Libyan observer was looking at the wrong side of the scale which would have resulted in a reading of 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the actual temperature.

As a result, the World Meteorological Organization has decided to declare the 90-year-old temperature record in Libya to be invalid. The new world temperature record is now the 56.7 degrees Celsius (134 degrees Fahrenheit) which was recorded on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, California.

"By recorded by the way we're meaning within the last 150 years of records that we have," Cerveny explained. "There have been times in the geologic history of the Earth that we've been much, much hotter (and) much, much colder, but we're talking about the instrumented record that we have available to us."

Cerveny said knowing the true world temperature record will have some important uses. "This is the highest recorded temperature of where people live, so this type of data can help cities that exist in such environments to design buildings that are best suited for these extremes," he said. "Knowing the maximum temperatures certain materials must endure leads to better products and designs. That's why many auto manufactures have test tracks in the hot Mohave desert."

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2012-09-14

[BookMan]

The Weather Detectives.

Riveting stuff and I look forward to the mini series

[cowslip]

I hope they scrutinise the US result in the same way.

[GentlemanJim]

Is this going to be the limit of our reprisal to Libya for killing the US Ambassador and his men?

Perhaps the World Met Office could have hung on to this info for a few days whilst things in Libya got kinda sorted out!

[cowslip]

Is this going to be the limit of our reprisal to Libya for killing the US Ambassador and his men?

Perhaps the World Met Office could have hung on to this info for a few days whilst things in Libya got kinda sorted out!

Reprisal? when will they learn!

[Seewolf]

I have been working for two years 300 km south of Sirte in Lybia and I have no doubt that they found 58 degree Celsius as I had recorded by myself between 1999 and 2001 sometimes over 50 degree and with a peak up to 57 Degree Celisus behind my Office where I had parked my pick up, not exposed to the wind.(this was a new mercury instrument) Just for Information...............

[sprq]

Having spent a summer in Libya not far from Azizia, I always had great suspicions about that figure. It was damned hot, for sure, but it seemed obvious to me that other places in Libya far into the desert would have been a lot hotter than Azizia, which is a town not far from the Mediterranean

Now we have a new problem record. The fact that it comes from a real desert makes it more valid to my mind than the Libyan one ever could have been. But there are surely zillions of desert locations around the world where higher temperatures have been reached -- but there was nothing there to record them.

[1weatherman]

Perhaps the biggest reason for the temperature being wrong was that the instrument shelter was placed upon a tarred concrete surface, most likely black in color. Never seen anything but black tar but the research back in time only said tarred concrete. As we know the color black absorbs heat more easier and thus the temperature reading would have been recorded too high. This is beside the fact that the Libyan weather observer didn't know how to read the thermometer. He was a greenhorn. So it all adds up to another desert location taking the record. Yes, spr&g, there may have been some higher readings in one of the deserts in the middle east. We will never know, but just remind me not to vacation there.

[Dr Robert]

wouldnt it be something that policy and decision making here was subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny...and then I woke up, it was just a dream.

[delh]

I hope they scrutinise the US result in the same way.

+ 1 They love their world records

[delh]

Is this going to be the limit of our reprisal to Libya for killing the US Ambassador and his men?

Perhaps the World Met Office could have hung on to this info for a few days whilst things in Libya got kinda sorted out!

Reprisal? when will they learn!

Totally agree. Why would the Met Office even remotely care?

[cdnvic]

This is a great use of resources

[canuckamuck]

This will only bring more protests.

[maidu]

I don't know much about Libyans' scientific acuity, but it would be interesting to get Thais more atuned to real science. If you ask a Thai what time it is, it's always a generalization. 4:09 becomes 4 o'clock, etc. Similar to compass directions. You'd be lucky to find one in 50 Thais sho could tell you where east is on any given day at any location in Thailand. Though most Thais could tell you the different prices and effectiveness of 25 different whitening cream brands or the plots of 5 soap operas, or the characteristics of various ghosts, .........in terms of their practical knowledge of science, they fail.

[Scott]

Let's stay on topic.