Slashdot Mirror
Death Valley Dethrones Impostor As Hottest Place On Earth
Hugh Pickens writes "Adam Nagourney reports that after a yearlong investigation a team of climate scientists announced that it is throwing out a reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah, Libya on Sept. 13, 1922 making the 134-degree reading registered on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley the official world record as the hottest place on earth. 'It's about time for science, but I think we all knew it was coming,' says Randy Banis. 'You don't underestimate Death Valley. Most of us enthusiasts are proud that the extremes that we have known about at Death Valley are indeed the most harsh on earth.' The final report by 13 climatologists appointed by the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency of the United Nations, found five reasons to disqualify the Libya claim, including questionable instruments, an inexperienced observer who made the reading, and the fact that the reading was anomalous for that region and in the context of other temperatures reported in Libya that day. 'The more we looked at it, the more obvious it appeared to be an error,' says Christopher C. Burt, a meteorologist with Weather Underground who started the debate in a blog post in 2010."
the temperature in Libya was in Celsius?
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
Would it, really?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
136.4 degrees is 58 degrees Celsius
(courtesy of the program in my sig's link).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
There’s a short documentary film about this new (old) Death Valley record called Dead Heat: Overturning the World’s Hottest Temperature , from Wunderground in association with Mitchell Film Company.
I was in Ali Al Salem, Kuwait in June of 2010 and the thermostats showed it was 138. Maybe it was because it was a Air Base and had a lot of planes? Anyway, the lack of humidity there meant the heat wasn't that bad. I've felt absolutely horrible in the Southern USA when the temperature was only in the 90s. There it was in the 130s and it was hot but not unbearably so. I guess the lack of humidity meant that your sweat actually worked better?
W00t! USA! USA!
bang goes my karma... again...
Or even degrees C, which is what scientists use...
In response to the article about Death Valley, Slashdot generated this quote:
It'll be just like Beggars' Canyon back home. -- Luke Skywalker
Indeed, except all the womp rats are dead, and not even a moisture farmer can make a living there. You nerf herders have it easy...
Nonsense. Compare to Dome A in Antarctica.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Was thinking the same thing. It's like they intentionally left it out.
Good, America is first again.
AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
It's funny how they do not take into account the nationalist usian bias in the analysis.
Or even degrees C, which is what scientists use...
Actually, the SI unit of temperature is the Kelvin.
And strangely you're proud of that. Weird.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well it's easier to convert from K to C than from K to F (or C to F). Anyway, any temperature should be postfixed with the unit, especially here on /..
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Well, I visited some African country that lies straight on the Equautor. As an individual from the west, I arrived with my prejudices that this country would be nautrally hotter than my home land.
I was wrong! The temperature, right at the equator was no more than 28 degrees celcius (82.4 degrees F). I was suprised. The locals told me it had to do with their altitude, which is much higher.
When I called my family, they had sympathy for the "hot weather". My repeated advice to them that my homeland (Texas) was hotter was difficult to believe.
Sad thing is that I am not alone. Almost everyone I have told this story still thinks, "If it's at the equator, it must be hot hot hot."
I later found out they even have a river, whose waters come from ice...right at the equator! Amazing!
Most temperature data collected over the years should be disqualified for those and other various reasons including the data fabrication that is done by GISS, NOAA and others.
For a number of articles on the topic that show the data fabrication see: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss.
Showing graphs without the data to support them, and claim operations have been applied without specifying the operations is quite frankly horse shit. Back up your assertions or go away.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
This seems to me to be a really dumb thing to be proud of.
I will see your Minnesota and raise you a Manitoba.
Difference of 162F
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
This is 'Murca goddamnit.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Maybe people on SlashDot will finally learn that scientific notation and the metric system make it easier to not make stupid mistakes while communicating measurements. Really, "136.4 degrees" ? Come on, put some scale with that, n00b.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Many of the articles show the data. What is horseshit is you not looking about to find the data associated with the graphs XaN-ASMoDi (894073).
Hugh Pickens... The new Roland Piquepaille?
Pimping his "blog" for page views...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yeah we all know governments prefer to fund bad-news-tastic climate science over nationalistic dick-waving.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh, just call him KhaDaffy-Duck and be done with it!
We should just settle this once and for all and call him "Crazy Stubble Mustache"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
All I can say is... Cool!!
<grin>
Why especially here on Slashdot, a US site?.
Because even Americans might need to know what temperature scale is used on a site that takes in articles from all over the world?
Same here and it didn't even feel particularly hot.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Time to go back under the bridge troll.
That cherrypicked crap has been denounced and debunked time and again.
Even Monckton doesn't resort to using it
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
If global warming is bringing more extreme weather, probably that record will get defeated next year, either in southern summer or northern one.
Many of the articles show the data.
BS. Missed that? Bullshit. In Canada most climate data is based on extrapolations on 30-35 year windows because there is no other data, because it doesn't exist. Any other data that existed was based on sites that weren't even close, or were from 400+KM away. Most of our weather network didn't even exist until 1977, and only cities, military bases and outposts did weather recording. Or landlocked ships.
Om, nomnomnom...
Jesus H. M. F. Christ people!
If it were 136.4 Kelvins it would NOT be anything like the hottest temperature recorded on Earth, in the great outdoors, we, humans, would consider it bitterly fucking cold. So unless you're not a human, or you're a moron, you're just splitting hairs. Ditto on the question of whether it's Celsius/Centigrade or Fahrenheit. If the outdoor temperature hits 136.4 or even 134 degrees C, referring to the ambient atmospheric temperature, without counting anywhere or any occasion when the temperature was higher as the result of something WE did, (like when we made the weather very hot in Dresden, Germany, or Hiroshima or Nagasaki in Japan, as a few examples that come readily to mind...) it would be hotter than anyone could handle just walking around. But it has been and currently is much hotter than that in many places on Earth, as I type this... such as inside geysers, and active volcanoes, for instance, to say nothing of the Earth's core.
When someone speaks of or writes about the "hottest place on Earth"... IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT THEY'RE REFERRING TO THE TEMPERATURE AS NATURALLY OCCURS DUE TO ROUTINE NATURAL EFFECTS OF SUN AND WIND AND RAIN, ETC. IT SHOULD BE LIKEWISE UNDERSTOOD, EXCEPT PERHAPS BY A BUNCH OF SMARTASSES, that when that temperature is 134 degrees, THAT IT'S IN FUCKING FAHRENHEIT!
Quit being a bunch of assholes, you know it's Fahrenheit, I know it's Fahrenheit, and was it lazy not to add the letter F? Yes. Was it worth all of you having an argument about? Jesus Tap Dancing, Tittiefucking Christ, NO.
You guys will argue about literally anything, won't you!?!
Yep it's hot there, photo I took in 2009 there in August... in the shade.
http://www.coleskingdom.com/pics/racetrack/100_4070.JPG
What for? It's already completely obvious that the units are degrees Fahrenheit, even to people from outside of the United States, such as myself. 136.4 degrees Celsius is 36.4 degrees above the boiling point of water; it's unlikely that good record keeping would have been done in such a climate :P
when I was in Iraq, in the summer time, it hit 135 on a regular basis, with 141 occationally on hot days
its not 110 degress, which it gets in west texas either.
Americans don't read, idiot
You're foolish if you think the human body's temperature is exactly 37C. In fact it varies according to your circadian rhythm and any activity you may or may not be doing. Anything between 36 and 37.5 is completely normal, and physicians only start to talk about "fever" past 38C.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
When I was there is was raining. Quite disappointing.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Well here is proof enough that history is indeed written by the victor.
Got a reading that doesn't tell the right story? Just delete it. That is how they do in the new world of climatology. First they vanish the Mideveal Warming Period and now this.
Not, as the misleading title suggests, the hottest place, just the hottest properly recorded single temperature reading
big emphasis on single temperature reading - one reading a day/week/year does not make.
Properly recording temperature isn't simple or intuitive - it's also kind of hard to do in some parts of the world because it's so damn hot.
The hottest place on the planet most years is in the Danakil Desert, which not surprisingly is a bit of a ghost town. Death Valley is about 86 metres below sea level, Danakil is a little lower (about 100m below). Nearby Dallol is the hottest average inhabited place on earth with an average mean of 34.4C and an average max of 41.1C.
Danakil can also be a bit warmer when the volcanoes are active... like some places get warmer when bushfires are raging (51C in parts of Victoria the other year, similar temperatures in some of the Californian fires).
Little of the planets temperatures are measured to the standards quoted in the parent article - so I'd take them with a big pinch of Danakil salt. And "apparent" (to humans) temperatures are a whole 'nuther thing. Shade temperatures don't allow for reflected heat from salt and white sand.
Biggest temperature variations - without a doubt it'd be the Black Hills (USA). Especially considering the extremely short time period involved. Only other place I can think of that comes close to those fast, extreme variations is Charlotte Pass (Australia).
I suspect you really missed the point ...
OP is pointing out that 37C is basically to nearest 1C accuracy, so it is pointless to call it 98.6F ie spurious accuracy
No sure why you needed to correct that ?
Ha, please. Temperatures in the Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter/desert) in the Arabian Peninsula have probably easily topped these records in the past few summers, if there were ever accurate official numbers published. I am an expat in the U.A.E. right now. Officially, the government does not broadcast temperatures over about 48 degrees C ever, even for its major cities which are cooler, since there would be justified calls for public holidays due to health concerns. My own personal thermometers as well as friends and colleagues have recorded temperatures well over 50 C several days in succession during afternoons even in coastal area where I live which are cooler than the inland desert areas. However - could my fellow slashdot users kindly advise me on the best methodology to be used so I can make my temperature measurements more 'official'. I'd like to take desert and coastal temperature measurements next summer and post these online along with my methodology and pictures of the measurement set up and display itself as well as proof of the time and location. Thanks !
Oh, piss off with your regurgitated denialist spew, ABC (Anonymous Batshit Coward)
I've been following the science behind climate change for 25 yrs and it's only getting more and more solid.
That's not to say there aren't still significant uncertainties but the groundwork has long been laid.
We have lost so much time to the cooligans that it's just sickening.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Remember what it's like when you open an oven to take out cooked food.? That blast of air is what Death Valley feels like in midsummer. Automobiles don't like it there, by the way.
"The committee deemed it plausible that inaccurate determination of which end of the recording pin (choosing the higher end rather than the correct lower end) to use for temperature evaluation created substantial error in measurement as well as other potential additional reading errors (e.g., slippage of the scale). Our committee consensus is that a total error of approximately 7C in reading a Bellani-Six thermometer by an inexperienced observer is probable." Sounds good but perfectly stupid argument as it gives a starting difference of 2*7C between maximum and minimum after resetting the thermometer. Any sober observer knows witch side of the recording pin must be measured.
Except it isn't the human body temperature is 37.0 C. Of course that's an average and it varies amongst people and by about 0.5 C during the day in an individual.
But there's a .0 there, it's three sginificant figures and so 98.6 F is not spurious accuracy.
"This sense of America, in modern usage, is used almost exclusively to refer to the United States of America" Thank you for referencing a wiki page that backs up my statement regarding CONSISTENT usage of the term America.
Well, my first post was just for Winnipeg, but if we're going all in:
Hottest: 44.4 C
Coldest: 52.8 C
Difference (C): 97.2C or 206.96F
I call it 'The Aristocrats'