On July 17, Earth may have witnessed the hottest midnight ever recorded, with an incredible 48.9°C. The potential new record was set in Death Valley, California, famous for record-breaking temperatures.
According to records from the Badwater basin weather station, this point was reached between 12 am and 1 am. While the measurements are tentative for now, if confirmed, they will show the highest midnight temperature ever recorded.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist at Yale Climate Connections, said in a meeting with New Scientist that he had no doubt that this record temperature had indeed been reached. But that record won’t be the warmest overall nighttime temperature. This record belongs to Khasab Airport in Oman, where temperatures stayed above 44.2°C all night between 16 and 17 June 2017.
It is also worth noting once again that this is not an official measurement. Official world weather records are held by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), but the highest midnight temperature is not one of them.
Death Valley is no stranger to sweltering temperatures as one of the hottest places in the world. According to data from the WMO and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Earth’s all-time highest temperature of 56.7°C was recorded here on July 10, 1913.
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However, there is controversy surrounding the validity of such records. In 2012, the WMO announced that the long-record air temperature of 58°C detected in Libya in 1922 would be invalidated 90 years later due to a recording error.
This latest potential climate record comes amid another heatwave that scorched the US South and Southwest and swept across borders in an already record-breaking month. So far, July has seen the hottest day record repeatedly broken and also the hottest week.
And with experts predicting that the moon itself could be the hottest month we’ve seen in 120,000 years, things seem to be getting hotter.
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