The 1913 maximum temperature world record at Death Valley: should we expect a new record in the near future?
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In accordance with record high global mean temperatures new local maximum temperature records have been observed in many places worldwide over the last few years. The question arises, what is the highest 2-m temperature on earth to be expected in the near future due to global warming? The investigation focuses on the temperature time series of Death Valley, California, the present world record holder of maximum temperature. A critical review is given on this maximum temperature world record of 134°F or 56.7°C, set on 10 July 1913. Different evaluations like comparison with neighbor stations, comparison with 20th century re-analyses and measures of dispersion are carried out. They all show that this record is highly questionable, because no physical mechanism is known, which could explain such a statistical outlier of the maximum temperature on a local scale over desert regions. A new low-pass filter technique of time series is being used to determine the long-term climatological temperature trend between 1911 and 2023 in Death Valley in the frame of global change, which is quite impressive. Finally, the probabilities of the occurrence of certain temperature thresholds in the near future are derived by utilizing a general extreme value distribution. It is shown that the probability of a new temperature world record of 135°F or 57.2°C in the next few years, which would make the present—albeit questionable—record obsolete, is still very low, despite global warming.
Source: Oxford Open Climate Change
Author: Reinhold Steinacker
Institution: University of Vienna
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,899
OpenAlex ID: W4409382477