Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com
Meteorologists have ended an 80-year debate over where and what the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was.
Back in the summer of 1913, temperatures soared to a scorching 134 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley, California, setting a record as the world’s hottest temperature.
However, less than 10 years later, on September 13, 1922, reports came in of a 136.6 degree Fahrenheit temperature being recorded in El Azizia, Libya.
There have always been skeptics of the Libyan temperature, leading meteorologists to do a little research to find out if the 136.6 degree temperature reading was inaccurate.
After determining that the Libya temperature had some errors, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has today accepted the Death Valley, California temperature as the most extreme ever recorded.
“We found systematic errors in the 1922 reading,” according to Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University President’s Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. “This change to the record books required significant sleuthing and a lot of forensic records work,” added Cerveny, who also is the Rapporteur of Climate and Weather Extremes for the WMO, the person responsible for keeping worldwide weather records.
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