14 ms·
A simple mistake that stuffed up world temperature records for 90 years
- dpkingma 5y agoDeath Valley prides itself on being the hottest place on earth, based on the temperature record of 54.0 °C (air temp at 1.5m). However, DV does not come out on top when looking at temperatures measured by satellites (EDIT: ground temperature, and less reliable.) From Wikipedia [1]: "The highest recorded temperature taken by a satellite is 66.8 °C (152.2 °F), which was measured in the Flaming Mountains of China in 2008. Other satellite measurements of ground temperature taken between 2003 and 2009, taken with the MODIS infrared spectroradiometer on the Aqua satellite, found a maximum temperature of 70.7 °C (159.3 °F), which was recorded in 2005 in the Lut Desert, Iran. The Lut Desert was also found to have the highest maximum temperature in 5 of the 7 years measured (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009). These measurements reflect averages over a large region and so are lower than the maximum point surface temperature." According to [2], the record is 80.8 °C at Lut Desert. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o... [2] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/aop/BAMS-D-20-0325.1/BAMS-D-20-0325.1.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/aop/BAMS-D-2...
- jandrese 5y agoDeath Valley: The hottest place on Earth where people can survive long enough to keep a temperature station manned. I am confused how 66.8C can be "the highest recorded temperature taken by a satellite", while the Aqua satellite found a maximum temperature of 80.8C.
- phaemon 5y agoImagine I was measuring the temperature in your home. I measured above your grill. Is that a good average for your home temperature?
- ngngngng 5y agoI once set my oven to 350F, does that mean my house holds the record?
- phaemon 5y agoNot even close. What do you reckon the highest temperature was achieved in a house?
- rovr138 5y agoForest fires have burnt houses. That's visible from space too.
- AlexCoventry 5y agoI heard the tungsten filament in old-fashioned light bulbs can reach 2800K.
- a9h74j 5y agoAnd LEDs can now reach 5000K :)
- quickthrowman 5y agoA tungsten filament can reach 4500 degrees Fahrenheit
- ThePowerOfFuet 5y agoThat's colour temperature, not actual temperature.
- seanp2k2 5y agohttps://www.hisour.com/correlated-color-temperature-24475/ https://www.hisour.com/correlated-color-temperature-24475/
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- bcrosby95 5y agoYou're comparing apples to oranges though. The 54.0 reading in Death Valley was measuring the temperature of the air - in particular, 1.5 meters above the ground. Satellites measure ground temperature - as in, temperature at the ground. Lots of things can affect ground temperature.
- dpkingma 5y agoTrue, edited original comment to reflect this.
- tablespoon 5y ago> You're comparing apples to oranges though. The 54.0 reading in Death Valley was measuring the temperature of the air - in particular, 1.5 meters above the ground. Satellites measure ground temperature - as in, temperature at the ground. Lots of things can affect ground temperature. Exactly. I have a radio thermometer in my attic whose readings max out at 140°F. During the summer it's regularly maxed out, so the actual air temp is hotter still (and the actual surface temp of the roof must be even hotter than that). Outside air temp is nowhere near any of those temps.
- albertgoeswoof 5y agoI found it absolutely shocking that Furnace Creek has a (well-watered) golf course and a whole bunch of air conditioned hotel rooms, despite being in a clearly inhabitable location. Exiting a fully air conditioned room at 20 degrees into 45+ degrees heat feels like literally like opening a furnace door. The sheer waste of energy to keep that hotel cooled down to those temperatures and golf-course playable year-round is just ridiculous.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoIt might be a "waste" but it doesn't have to be damaging. Air conditioners (a special case of heat pumps) are extremely efficient and could easily be powered from a solar array. The hottest places in the world tend not to be short of sunlight. Where they get the water from is another matter though. I always wondered how much you could scale up Air Well technology, which condenses water out of the air. I suspect the places that have lots of sunlight also don't have a lot of humidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)
- thomasahle 5y agoAccording to [1] Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States. I guess that's less than I had imagined. And apparently it's not just because northern houses don't have AC, since apparently [2] 87% of houses do. Edit: Then again a lot of energy is used by industry, so maybe 6% used by residential air conditioning is a lot. [3] suggest 17% of residential energy is AC. [1]: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-conditioning https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/home-cooling-systems/air-... [2]: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air-conditioning.php https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air... [3]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
- LeoPanthera 5y agoHeat pumps are amazing things, they are more than 100% efficient, since they use only n watt-hours to move >n watt-hours of energy from one place to another. Under ideal conditions they can move 3n while consuming only n. It's far more efficient to use a heat pump in reverse to heat a space than it is to use a traditional electric heater, which is "only" 100% efficient. (Perhaps I should have said joules, not Wh? Units are confusing.)
- kevinpet 5y agoThis is a good illustration of a principle that when your sample contains the most extreme events you will find that measurement errors make up a much larger fraction of them than you would expect.
- treeman79 5y agoHow about when gravity and earth spin are sufficient to affect world records. https://xkcd.com/852/ https://xkcd.com/852/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sgt 5y ago"Stuffed up" - had to be an Australian news article
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI used to live just south of Death Valley. One summer, it was up around 115F every day for two weeks straight in July. An occasional spike in temps to that level was not a big deal. The houses were built to some degree for that environment and had , for example, narrow windows with some kind of architectural detail I've never seen elsewhere that helped shade the windows. But after days and days of such temperatures, the AC blowing cold air felt like a joke. The walls were hot. The floor was hot. The couch was hot. You learn to eat different and live different in an environment like that. You make sure you get enough to drink. You teach the kids to stay hydrated. You teach everyone the importance of electrolytes. I went for walks for exercise after dark when the temp dropped to 99F. There was precious little shade and I sunburned easily which is another serious health threat on top of the risk of heat prostration. Desert cities of old were built to keep things tolerable at street level. City location was chosen for ability to mitigate the heat, typically a plateau a little above the surrounding terrain. Streets were oriented to maximize the cooling effect of prevailing winds. Buildings were designed to reflect heat rather than soak it up, among other things. Humans used to work out in the weather much more consistently than we do these days and tended to primarily get around on foot. Now, we go from home to car to office to car to store to car, etc. We don't have the same relationship to the weather and we seem to have forgotten how to live with weather. At least in the US. Maybe other places are a bit better about such things.
- barrkel 5y agoHouses - and especially high rise developments - are increasingly built according to global fashions or individualistic whims, divorced from regional styles which evolved with the local climate and available materials.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoregional styles which evolved with the local climate and available materials. That's often called vernacular architecture and it typically innately includes elements of passive solar design. Such building styles were well-suited to local climate with a minimum of energy-intensive cooling or heating because people simply couldn't afford it. Additionally, we had cultural practices rooted in staying adequately warm or cool without counting on an HVAC system: Tapestries on castle walls blocked drafts and provided insulation. A "three dog night" was a night so cold, the upper classes let three of their large hunting dogs sleep with them to stay warm. Siestas were naps taken during the hottest part of the day in place of working in the heat. Buildings routinely had windows positioned to create a cross breeze if you opened them. Windows routinely were positioned to provide adequate light for essential tasks without having to turn on any lights during the day. Etc. Now we build some awful little cardboard box and slap an HVAC system on it as if tech makes up for bad design. It doesn't.
- magicalhippo 5y agoThis reminds me of a story my dad used to tell. A friend of him was tasked by the wildlife protection agency to count the grouse population in the county every year. What he did was to walk a given path through the mountains at the same time each year, and count how many grouse he saw along the way. This was then used by the agency to estimate the population. One year he was unavailable, and as such he asked his friend to do it. He instructed him on the path, how to count and all that. Later that year the local paper's headline stated "Dramatic increase in grouse population!" Turned out his buddy didn't bother to do the long walk, and instead just came up with a number he submitted to the agency.
- m-ee 5y agoIn high school we were supposed to do a similar project about squirrel populations. We got lazy, stopped doing the walks and just submitted numbers similar to the team that had done the same project the year before. I mention this to one of those older students at a party and he tells me they did the same thing.
- magicalhippo 5y agoHeh yeah I can imagine. Big difference was that the grouse count was used to set the hunting quota...
- stakkur 5y agoWe live in spaceships, hooked up to life support. Skyscrapers are nothing but sealed spaceships pumping in air and water and pumping out waste. Same for most homes.
- lovecg 5y agoI do like the idea of ground source heat pumps. If we all lived in caves hundreds of feet deep, the temperature would be near perfect year around. In a way, the heat pump “brings the cave to the surface”. There’s something very satisfying about this design, we’re not using technology to insulate ourselves from the Earth — we’re working directly with it.
- legostormtroopr 5y agoI am uncomfortable with historical meteorological revision. There is enough problem with climate change non-believers that retroactive "adjustment" of historical weather records is only going to fuel conspiracy theories - especially when they are adjusted down. There is more than enough evidence of climate change without revising past records - so why do it? Especially given that this record requires that an un-identified person may have possibly made an error reading a thermometer. The evidence that this value is wrong is lacking.
- AbrahamParangi 5y agoPersonally, I think worrying about optics does more damage to the optics of science than not.
- rytcio 5y ago> retroactive "adjustment" of historical weather records Then maybe it's not a conspiracy theory?