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Death Valley's record hot month

Ben Domensino, Wednesday August 1, 2018 - 13:53 AEST

California's Death Valley may have just experienced the hottest calendar month on record anywhere in the world.

The weather station at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California is no stranger to heat. It holds the current world record for the highest reliably measured temperature, reaching 56.7 degrees Celsius in July 1913. This record has been scrutinised and accepted by the World Meteorological Organisation.

Now, the same place may have registered the highest mean monthly temperature on Earth. While the data is yet to be formally analysed, it looks like Furnace Creek's average maximum temperature during July was 49 degrees and the average minimum temperature was 36 degrees. Combining the two values gives a monthly mean temperature of around 42 degrees, which would break the previous record of 41.9 degrees from the same location during July last year.

One of the reasons Furnace Creek is able to outdo other notorious hotspots around the world is because it lies roughly 60 metres below sea level, within the Mojave Desert. Being lower than sea level allows the site to take advantage of something called adiabatic heating, which refers to the rate at which temperature increases as elevation decreases in Earth's troposphere. As a rough guide, for every 100 metres of elevation you lose, the temperature rises by roughly one degree Celsius.

Amongst Furnace Creek's likely record-breaking July, four consecutive days reached 53 degrees Celsius and a couple of nights only dropped to 39 degrees.

Australia's highest temperature on record was 50.7 degrees at Oodnadatta in SA during January 1960.

- Weatherzone

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