Nature & Environment

Death Valley is hottest place ever recorded

By T.K. Randall
September 15, 2012 ·  6 comments

Image Credit: Roger469 The record had been held by El Azizia in Libya for 90 years until a new investigation by the World Meteorological Organisation determined that the reading was likely to have been bungled at the time by someone who had missed a thermometer. With this record nullified the title instead went to the second hottest recorded temperature in Death Valley.

"They presumably roped in an inexperienced person that day," said climate scientist David Parker. "If the observer had read the correct end of the pin and there had been grass or sand underneath the instrument instead of asphalt, the problem wouldn't have been so bad."

Source: Guardian Unlimited | Comments (6)

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