The new hottest place on Earth: Death Valley, California
As any weather aficionado can avow, Earth's most iconic weather record has long been the legendary all-time hottest temperature of 58°C (136.4°F) measured 90 years ago today at El Azizia, Libya on September 13, 1922. One hundred thirty six degrees! It's difficult to comprehend that heat like that could exist on our planet. For 90 years, no place on Earth has come close to beating the unbelievable 136 degree reading from Al Azizia, and for good reason--the record is simply not believable. But Earth's mightiest weather record has been officially cast down. Today, the official arbiter of Earth's weather records, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), announced that the all-time heat record held for exactly 90 years by El Azizia in Libya "is invalid because of an error in recording the temperature." The WMO committee found five major problems with the measurement. Most seriously, the temperature was measured in a paved courtyard over a black, asphalt-like material by a new and inexperienced observer, not trained in the use of an unsuitable replacement instrument that could be easily misread. The observer improperly recorded the observation, which was consequently in error by about 7°C (12.6°F.) The new official highest hottest place on the planet is now Death Valley, California. A remarkable high temperature of 56.7°C (134°F) was measured there on 10 July 1913, at Greenland Ranch.
Figure 1. The trading post at Al Azizia, Libya in 1923. The photo was taken from the Italian military fort located on a small hill just south of the trading post. It was at this fort that the temperature of 58°C (136.4°F) was observed on Sept. 13, 1922 (used with permission from the family of Gen. Enrico Pezzi).
The story behind the overturning of Earth's most hallowed weather record
Today's announcement is the culmination of a 3-year research effort begun by wunderground weather historian, Christopher C. Burt. His blog post today, World Heat Record Overturned--A Personal Account, provides a fascinating detective story on how the record came to be cast down--and how the Libyan revolution of 2012 almost prevented this from happening.
Figure 2. The new official hottest place on the planet: Death Valley, California. Wide open spaces, infinite views, intensely salty water, mind-boggling heat. What's not to love about this place? Image credit: Wunderphotographer SonomaCountyRAF.
Dead Heat: The Video
Don't miss the 25-minute wunderground video, Dead Heat, a detective story on how the El Azizia record was overturned.
Atlantic tropical update
Tropical Storm Nadine is recurving to the northwest and north well east of the Lesser Antilles Islands, on a track that would likely keep this storm far out at sea away from any land areas. However, Nadine may eventually threaten the Azores Islands or Newfoundland; the models are divided on how the steering currents will evolve next week, and we cannot be sure which way Nadine will go during the middle of next week.
The models predict that a trough of low pressure off the U.S. East Coast may serve as the focus for development of a non-tropical low pressure system on Sunday or Monday, but this low will likely form too far to the north to become a tropical storm. The GFS model has been predicting a tropical wave coming off the coast of Africa may develop next week, but has not been consistent with the timing or location of the development.
In the Western Pacific, Super Typhoon Sanba is an impressive top-end Category 4 storm with 155 mph winds, and is headed north-northwest towards a possible landfall in Korea early next week.
Given the importance of the new world record all-time high temperature, I'll leave this post up until Saturday afternoon, when I'll post an update on the tropics.
Jeff Masters
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Yep I always breathe a little easier after Oct :)
I am such a wimp with cold weather anything under 70 is cold :) not quite long john weather that would be under 50 degrees LOL!
Those blobs 1)Near Bahammas and 2 the one in east of the gulf have both blown up in size Click link to see expansion
Link
That's when my pipes were frozen...
Edited: for spelling.
yeap keeping one eye on them both where will the bahamas blob go is the ? looks ene from here
YIKES!! You are Super Woman my blood would freeze in my pipes :)
looks like a wet weekend in Florida to me
With this forecasted you can expect a massive warm air anomaly around greenland.
The result is that these cold air anomilies in the heart of the United States can favor these type of set ups for Arctic in general.
Yes it does seem like sometimes on cold days the sky is so bright and so blue, very beautiful... and the silence is because everything is frozen :)
AUSTRALIA faces a big dry spell after our wettest two years on record, it was claimed today.
A dramatic shift in ocean temperatures through the Pacific and Indian oceans is about to cause the dramatic shift in our weather, according to Tom Saunders, Senior Meteorologist at The Weather Channel.
Australia is now rapidly drying out, he said this morning.
"In July weather patterns started to shift, evident only a month later when the nation recorded its fifth driest August in 113 years of records," Mr Saunders said.
"The nation's dry August was not just random variability, it was due to changes in water temperatures across the Pacific and Indian oceans.
"A positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) has now firmly developed off Australia's west coast. A positive IOD refers to a pattern of colder waters off the west coast of Indonesia and warmer waters off the east coast of Africa. This reduces the amount of evaporation and moisture carried from the tropical oceans into the atmosphere over Australia, and this reduction in moisture eventually reduces rainfall through the country," says Saunders.
The effects of the abnormal ocean temperatures are already being felt.
"Coolangatta has recorded its longest dry spell on record with 48 consecutive days without rain. Alice Springs is less than a week away from recording its longest dry spell on record while Brisbane has recorded only 0.2mm of rain over the past 54 days," Mr Saunders said
"When you combine the positive IOD with an emerging El Ni%uFFFDo we are very confident rain will be below average over most of the country through the remainder of 2012, particularly through south-eastern states."
"Even though we are expecting below average rain there will still be short periods of relief. In the short term the dry spell for some parts of Australia including south-east Queensland will break, with a spell of storms and showers likely next week.%u2019%u2019
Yesterday saw the first rain in Sydney for more than three weeks. Despite warnings of a big dry Sydney is forecast to see showers for most of next week after a mostly sunny weekend.
Link
It will be interesting to see what kind of conditions will set up for this season. I want snow. Much of it too. :D
We dont call it anything like that....thats what adults trying to be cool with kids do....
Monarch butterfly blown across Atlantic to Dorset
From BBC:
More than a thousand wildlife fans flocked to Dorset to see a rare monarch butterfly which was swept 3,500 miles across the Atlantic by Hurricane Isaac. They were huddled around a bush in a Portland park after reports the striking orange, black and white butterfly was feeding. Some of the twitchers had been in the region to see a rare short-billed dowitcher spotted in Weymouth. They had travelled from as far as Cumbria and Scotland.
Experts believe the monarch butterfly - which has a four-inch wingspan - had been blown off course as it attempted to migrate from North America to Mexico. Martin Cade, from Portland Bird Observatory, said: "It looks very tropical and exotic so it sticks out like a sore-thumb."
Story con't here.
Wow. That's incompetence.
In other weather news:
The Super-Typhoon Sanba appears to be taking the eastern side of the cone. This is going to be a close call for Okinawa and parts of mainland Japan.
Tropical Storm Isaac triggers microinsurance payments for Haiti's budding entrepreneurs
From CSM and WSJ:
In Haiti, insurance payouts are landing in the bank accounts of small business owners as fast as Tropical Storm Isaac landed onshore. Through a for-profit reinsurance company called MiCRO (Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation), formed in March 2011 by the global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps and Haiti’s largest microfinance institution Fonkoze, female microentrepreneurs who hold policies will have their loans cancelled and receive a $125 payout to replace damaged inventory or repair homes or businesses.
The program is an example of the growing use of so-called microinsurance to help protect some of the world's poorest people from the devastating economic effects of catastrophes. While business owners in the developed world count on insurance to help them rebuild and recover after a disaster, people in places like Haiti have historically had to start from scratch. Haiti, plagued by more than its share of devastating earthquakes and floods, is Exhibit A for how Mother Nature can deliver massive setbacks. Fonkoze's borrowers, which include shopkeepers, hairdressers and farmers, have suffered major losses in recent years.
“For many years, I watched women entrepreneurs struggle to climb the ladder out of poverty, only to be knocked down time and time again by catastrophic losses from hurricanes or earthquakes,” said Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze. “Now for the first time, MiCRO has made it possible for those women to quickly recover their losses, rebuild their source of income, and avoid a potential poverty trap.”
More of the story here.
Well if you click the link you'll see it's exactly the same as the news website has the story.
Because you were the only person who checked :)
What about kwgirl?
I plussed it mostly for the story, btw.... :D
I didn't even see the Tattoos. I was to busy trying to work out which Sydney beach it was.
:D
On a weather note, its back 2 school for me so i leave you with this
Keep reading it..........
go ahead, alex, go..
The evacuees are leaving some 17 villages around the Volcano of Fire (Volcan de Fuego), which sits about 10 miles (16 km) from the colonial city of Antigua.
The evacuation began after the volcano began spewing lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 m) down its slopes on Thursday.
Now I'm craving that one last tomato from the garden...
What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended.
How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth’s surface? Less than a hundred years or several hundred? We simply don’t know.
Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within natural variations over the last few thousand years.
While an enduring temperature rise of the same size over the next century would cause humanity to make some changes, it would undoubtedly be within our ability to adapt.
Entering a new ice age, however, would be catastrophic for the continuation of modern civilization.
One has only to look at maps showing the extent of the great ice sheets during the last Ice Age to understand what a return to ice age conditions would mean. Much of Europe and North-America were covered by thick ice, thousands of feet thick in many areas and the world as a whole was much colder.
The last “little” Ice Age started as early as the 14th century when the Baltic Sea froze over followed by unseasonable cold, storms, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland and the loss of grain cultivation in Iceland. Harvests were even severely reduced in Scandinavia And this was a mere foreshadowing of the miseries to come.
By the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, wiping out farms and entire villages. In England, the River Thames froze during the winter, and in 1780, New York Harbor froze. Had this continued, history would have been very different. Luckily, the decrease in solar activity that caused the Little Ice Age ended and the result was the continued flowering of modern civilization.
There were very few Ice Ages until about 2.75 million years ago when Earth’s climate entered an unusual period of instability. Starting about a million years ago cycles of ice ages lasting about 100,000 years, separated by relatively short interglacial perioods, like the one we are now living in became the rule. Before the onset of the Ice Ages, and for most of the Earth’s history, it was far warmer than it is today.
Indeed, the Sun has been getting brighter over the whole history of the Earth and large land plants have flourished. Both of these had the effect of dropping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to the lowest level in Earth’s long history.
Five hundred million years ago, carbon dioxide concentrations were over 13 times current levels; and not until about 20 million years ago did carbon dioxide levels dropped to a little less than twice what they are today.
It is possible that moderately increased carbon dioxide concentrations could extend the current interglacial period. But we have not reached the level required yet, nor do we know the optimum level to reach.
So, rather than call for arbitrary limits on carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps the best thing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climatology community in general could do is spend their efforts on determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide needed to extend the current interglacial period indefinitely.
NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth’s climate. Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age?
We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp.
Gerald Marsh is a retired physicist from the Argonne National Laboratory and a former consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology and policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration. Readers may e-mail him at gemarsh@uchicago.edu
It's all it what you're used to :) 11 degrees with no wind is just another cool morning in the mountains. But normally our cool air comes with wind, and then it finally gets cold. Wind chills to 10-20 below are not at all uncommon in a normal winter. Last winter, we had spring for 3 months and now I feel like it's been summer forever... it never used to be in the 90s all through March.
Fall is my favorite season, except I have to think about winter coming soon.
HPC= way too conservative as always for rainfall totals in Central Florida, lol.
Quoting to preserve once the attacks on this began...que to Wizard of AGW and the flying monkeys....
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