On July 17 , the Earth may have witnessed the hot midnight ever recorded , at a stifling 48.9 ° C ( 120 ° atomic number 9 ) . The potential new record was set in Death Valley , California , which isnotoriousfor record - disclose temperatures .
This recent milestone was reached between the hours of 12 and 1 am , per recordings fromBadwater river basin weather place . While the readings are just probationary for now , if confirmed , they will mark the highest temperature ever recorded at this time .
Jeff Masters , a meteorologist at Yale Climate Connections , toldNew Scientisthe has no dubiousness that this was the case .
It is not , however , the hottest overall nighttime temperature . Thisrecordbelongs to Khasab Airport , Oman , where temperatures stayed above 44.2 ° C ( 111.6 ° F ) all night between June 16 and 17 , 2017 . Again , this is not an official meter reading : the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ) maintains prescribed humanity weather criminal record , but hot nighttime temperature is not one of them .
Death Valley is no stranger to sweltering temperatures , being one of the hot space on Earth . According to theWMOand theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA ) , the globe ’s all - time high temperature – 56.7 ° vitamin C ( 134 ° F ) – was recorded here on July 10 , 1913 .
However , there is debate fence in the validity of such recordings . In 2012 , the WMOannouncedthe long - fend record air temperature of 58 ° C ( 136.4 ° F ) , discover in Libya in 1922 , was to be overruled after 90 years due to a recording fault .
This latest likely mood record add up as the US is in the thick of aheatwave , which is scorching swathes of the South and Southwest , and is yet another milestone in an already record - damp calendar month . So far , July has see thehottest dayrecord repeatedly break in , as well as thehottest - ever week .
And things attend to only be getting hotter , with expertspredictingthe month itself may be the hottest we ’ve seen in 120,000 years .
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
