On Sunday, August 16th the National Weather Service in Las Vegas, Nevada sent out a Tweet highlighting a new maximum daily temperature of 130°F in Death Valley:
Predictably, the media jumped on this number with the Los Angeles Times saying “…possibly the highest mercury reading on Earth since 1913“. Even the Drudge Report got into the act putting the 130°F temperature headline front and center.
(Added) and on the NWS Las Vegas Facebook page, they posted this:
While global warming activists are rubbing their hands together in anticipation and glee hoping this will aid their case, what they and the LA Times aren’t telling you is that this is simply “business as usual” for Death Valley. In fact, back in 1913, over 100 years of “global warming” ago, Death Valley’s official weather station at Greenland Ranch hit an all time record of 134°F, and also hit 130°F or higher three times that July:
And here is the table of records for Death Valley:
While climate crusaders would like you to think today’s 130°F temperature is more “proof” of global warming aka “climate change” induced by fossil fuel use putting more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, the irrefutable fact is that in 1913, CO2 in our atmosphere was about 43% lower than today at 290 parts per million in 1913 compared to the “Climate crisis” level of 414 PPM today.
You have to wonder, if current CO2 levels are responsible for record heat waves today, as climate activists like to claim, how did it produce a still unbroken record temperature of 134°F back in July 1913?
The answer is; it didn’t then, and didn’t today.
The unbearably hot weather in Death Valley is a combination of a hot regional weather pattern and local factors found nowhere else on Earth, according to the National Park Service:
“The depth and shape of Death Valley influence its summer temperatures. The valley is a long, narrow basin 282 feet (86 m) below sea level, yet is walled by high, steep mountain ranges. The clear, dry air and sparse plant cover allow sunlight to heat the desert surface. Heat radiates back from the rocks and soil, then becomes trapped in the valley’s depths. Summer nights provide little relief as overnight lows may only dip into the 85°F to 95°F (30°C to 35°C) range. Heated air rises, yet is trapped by the high valley walls, is cooled and recycled back down to the valley floor. These pockets of descending air are only slightly cooler than the surrounding hot air. As they descend, they are compressed and heated even more by the low elevation air pressure. These moving masses of super heated air blow through the valley creating extreme high temperatures.”
So, don’t fret about climate change because Death Valley got hot again, it’s business as usual for the place, and not an indicator for global temperatures in any way.
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The MSM is trying to discredit the 1913 observations. A few articles I’ve seen say the 134F record is disputed.
Yeah, the thermodynamic characteristics of mercury have changed a lot in 100 years. Oh, wait…
100+ years for global warming to catch up to heat of 1913
huffington post – just posted “likely the hottest in a Century”
Geez – they omitted “not the hottest in the last 110 years”
The media is fake news.
I can’t imagine any meaningful way for today’s scientists to assess the reliability of the 1913 report. If today’s scientists try “we have better thermometers that they had” then they will have to admit that the 1913 reports were as likely to be too low rather than too high.
But I’m not surprised that the media are doing their best to make this new temperature a record.
The media have an attention span of 12 hours or so – hence every day gives us a new record high temperature 🙂
As a worker in a media company in Australia I think you are being quite a bit too generous with that figure.
boffin77
August 17, 2020 at 10:28 am
“they will have to admit that the 1913 reports were as likely to be too low rather than too high.”
Very good point boffin.
It’s in their interests to promote a new record. It allows them to push the climate change fraud yet again and that pushes their sales up. Journalists get prizes for pushing climate change, not for debunking it as a fraud.
There are some good reasons for disputing the 134F reading. Check out this article: https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/an-investigation-of-death-valleys-134f-world-temperature-record.html
no tree ring proxies there in 2013? You can always trust those tree thermometers- accurate to multiple decimal places.
/sarcasm
the observer was a dolt, faked a bunch of readings
Can you tell us why it is named Furnace Creek, and not Dolt Station?
If they named them after the type of people that operate them they would all be called Dolt Station.
This is either not really Mosher, or is making a gratuitous assertion without evidence, that can be just as gratuitously disregarded.
“The observer was a dolt”
jeez Mosh, are you drinking again?
That Kool Ade habit is hard to kick Anthony, show some compassion. And please don’t suggest Mosh is a dolt, that would be just plain cruel.
So, in 1913, this observer anticipated the future issues temperature would bring and with his knowledge of the future somehow decided to fake some readings?
And you are going to stick with that?
I’m new here, but have already lost all respect for you
What a pathetic attempt at drive by smear.
If someone were going to fake some readings, the last thing you would want to do is fake record setting readings. That would draw too much attention to you.
You want FAKE.. go to the BEST !!
Do you have any evidence, or do you just hate anything that goes against your paycheck?
Steven finally putting his arts degree to good use as a fiction writer.
Mosh is looking at himself in a mirror.
The observer most definitely is a DOLT !
The motivation would be for him to do the opposite. The current Furnace Creek was until 1933 named “Greenland Ranch”. The owner wanted to make it a resort! So the motivation to falsify would have been to show lower temps NOT higher. And BTW that same guy owned the near by Borax mines and certainly it would not be in his interest to claim it was hotter than it was.
If the 1913 figure is respected, as are all the lower temperatures from that time and not just for Death Valley because they set the reference point for the beginning of ‘global warming’, then the media and the alarmist self promoters are done out of a !!!! HEADLINE. Without citing any objective evidence they just throw about the assertion that the 1913 figure ‘is in doubt’. This sort of crap is about the level of reality denial this self intoxicated mob is stuck at. But hey, there will be some self promoting LPU’s coming out of this published in Nature etc and that is what it is really all about. These days ‘climate science’ in particular is a KPI driven game of quantity first and to hell with quality.
An easy and simple technique to copy.
“I think that the 2020 130°F Death Valley temperature might be wrong.”
There you are. The 130° record is now disputed as well…..
Of course they are! All they have to do is merely plant the seed of doubt and the masses of useful idiots do the rest of work to spread it. Logical and empirical analysis of said doubt is irrelevant.
Yes, that’s their angle on it. However, if they want to claim that historic temps. are unreliable, then they have nothing to make comparisons with, to say today’s temps are higher. ”Unreliable” works both ways, but they assume it just means it fits their narrative.
If it didn’t have a long, long history or being intolerably hot there, it probably would have been named something else.
Hoyt, the name Death Valley and Furnace Creek caused two other geologists and myself to cross from east to west in JUly, 1990. We were in a company dark blue blazer with a black vinyl roof. Part way across, midday, the motor overheats. We turn off air conditioner and continue. Motor gets dangerously hot. We turn on heater to max output, motor still hot, around 150 degrees inside. Fortunately, being geologists, we had a cooler full of survival fluids. We drank some of said fluids and poured some over our heads. Made it to other side, Furnace Creek. Replenished survival fluids and waited for evening, then continued. The Blazer stank of survival fluids for about a year. Moral of story: make sure you have adequate survival fluids when you cross Death Valley.
BBC says the 1913 temperatures are disputed. They would.
The Baghdad Bob Corporation
Breaking news…
….global warming causes record heat waves to be cooler
film at 11
In other news, Water Wet.
Icy cold front headed for the Western Cape this week, flooding expected
South America and Australia will follow.
Southern Hemisphere’s Incoming Big Freeze — S. America, S. Africa, and Australia are all Bracing for a Brutal Bout of Polar Cold
Hot here, cold there….
Northern Hemisphere Summer… Southern Hemisphere Winter.
How strange
You read, temperatures tend to fall far below average.
Temperatures have been well above the 1981-2010 average so far this SH winter, according to UAH LT satellite data. +0.4C in both Jun & Jul over land & ocean; up to +0.6C in Jun and +0.8C in Jul over land areas only: https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
You know the difference bewtween past and future ?
You live in the past, I talk about the future.
PS
I think, the 2m temps are much more interesting, aren’t they ?
“The past” meaning the previous 2 months?
Antarctic warming causes the air to rise toward the top end of the planet, so antarctic cold is being felt in A, SA and SA:)
Nevertheless, Antarctic iceshield is growing hitting 1981-2010 average.
I was just being silly.
Anthony,
Drudge has for long gone over to the dark side. Normals have moved to Citizen Free Press and Whatfinger. 130 again, ho hum.
Bongino Report
Yes, Drudge has lost the plot. On the dark side, everyone’s a hysteric. If they notice him at all, they’ll remember how he wouldn’t let them bury Monica.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Rantinly is the one I prefer.
There were rumors 18 months ago (January-February 2019) that Matt Drudge sold-out a controlling interest in a secret deal, with Non-Disclosure Agreements, to Bloomberg media. The secret, private deal gave Matt at least many 10’s of millions to a low 100’s millions to turn over content control to Mike Bloomberg. To keep the appearance of nothing happened/changed Matt retained some level of editorial and layout control. The tone of what was posted on the Drudge Report though began to dramatically shift after Spring 2019.
Along with the two websites you mentioned, I also use The Liberty Daily and Signs of the Times. They are all good alternatives to what Drudge used to be.
Not good enough. That new reflected-heat-into site should be producing new all-time record highs by now. But just wait — it’ll get there.
Naw. The “new reflected-heat-into site” is presumably the Badwater instrument installed by the Ames Research Center in the 1990s. It’s 30km down the road and about 13 meters lower in elevation than the NPS headquarters site at Greenland Ranch/Furnace Creek where the 130F reading was recorded yesterday and the 134F reading was made in 1913. On average, it may well be a bit hotter than Furnace Creek, but I’ve never validated that assumption. I looked around last night to see if temperature data from Badwater was available for yesterday. If it is, I couldn’t find it.
Anthony
I remember years ago they moved the weather station to a location you thought at the time would be warmer (or that is my recollection). I searched your archives and couldnt find it. Could you post a link?
I think it was john Daly who had an article on that. The site was moved to manufacture a new record. From what he said it is surprising it has taken so long to get close to the old record.
Wow time flies. That article was 2002.
It should add to the controversy.
Thanks
But its a dry heat. Meanwhile we just passed another tipping point.. I guess if we keep tipping over it comes back to normal again… https://www.yahoo.com/news/greenlands-melting-ice-sheet-passed-002749194.html
Is this the station that was moved several years ago to the base of a black cliff?
Was this recorded at the original or new station, facing a southern exposure rocky cliff?
It’s a West Facing cliff of — as I recall — shiny, white Zabriskie Quartzite. To the West, beyond the paved parking area and asphalt road are extensive salt flats. It surely gets a bit toasty there on Summer afternoons. It may not be the hottest place on the planet, but it’d sure be on any reasonable list of candidates for that dubious honor.
For more information, Google “Badwater weather station”
It’s a west/northwest facing cliff. The station is about 100 feet from the cliff and about 55 feet from the roadway. It’s not as bad a siting the station in a parking but it seems less than ideal.
They have been disputed. NOAA reviewed them and let them stand. BTW the 1913 records were set before there were asphalt parking lots, vehicle and AC exhaust, and a solar array close to the station as they have now.
So if any temperature should be disputed it should be the latest since it cannot be honestly compared to the 1913 records recorded when the site was far more pristine.
I look at such things as “It’s the temperature.”
Such readings are not very useful for climate (sic) studies. Atmospheric temperature is not climate.
But my point is, had I been at that location, at that time, and called home, I would have said “Wow! It’s 130 degrees.”
{Truth be told, I’ve only experienced 117° and -33°F.}
I’ve worked in -55c, in 1994, NE BC in drilling rigs
On the bright side, I think your body cannot discern the difference below -35, it’s just MF cold
Broke my heavy rig boot kicking a pipe
They just could have Googled it:
https://ggweather.com/climate/extremes_us.htm
– JPP
almost all of the high temperature records were before global warming
That’s why the alarmists always focus on an artificially constructed “average global temperature.” That way they don’t have to admit that the normal actual measured temperature range of Earth is not being exceeded anywhere at all.
Average temperatures in general, to include minimum temps and gloss over the lack of increase in maximum temps.
For some reason all this CO2 forgets how to amplify temperatures in the daytime then remembers how again every night…
The cynical interpretation is that it’s just urban heat islands manifesting themselves, but you don’t want to rule out forgetful CO2 too quickly.
Yeah not one state has its highest recorded temperature in the 2000+, so much for global warming.
my bad 1 had its highest temperature in the last 20 years.
Do you have a link to that? I want to hit people over the head with it.
OK sorry, I got JPP’s link above. South Carolina it was.
Maybe the observer was a dolt and drank too much?
So much BS! Temperatures as high has 135 F. are common in the central part of the Saudi Arabian Desert! Go only one hour South of Riyadh in the Rub’ Al-Khali for temperatures that make “Death Valley” look air conditioned!
Great post Anthony !
( p.s. Why am I still in the “dog house” after 2 years ? )
Hmmm. An area with an almost total absence of greenhouse gases.
That’s where you get extremes.
If it doesn’t suit ‘the narrative’ it’s weather or, in this case, it’s disputed.
If it suits ‘the narrative’ it’s global warming and it’s as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Somebody should do a study of who is more honest, the left or the right. I have a sneaking suspicion I already know the answer.
Was that intended?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_of_Gibraltar
“Gibraltar has around 34 miles (55 km) of tunnels, nearly twice the length of its entire road network.”
Apparently, according to the Beebiots and others, the mere fact that something “has been disputed” is enough to cast doubt on it. By that logic, the earth may, or may not be round, and we may, or may not have had astronauts land on the moon.
yeah, 130F is definitely hype. absolutely no problem, assuming air conditioning.
Heck, it was only 126 in Palm Springs (I have never seen so many golf courses in my life!)
Bagdad was 125F (a record for Bagdad) 4 days ago. problem there is they only electricity for about 4 hours per day.
Not sure if following was a record, but it was super hot to me:
Back in 1983 I was in Arizona for 14 days. In about five of those days we reached 128°F. People were sitting in lakes and ponds, drinking beer and lemonade.
A week later, the heat wave had moved up to the mid states. Although it was way less warm in the mid states, it caused many to die, whereas very few were affected in Arizona.
During the heat wave in Arizona, a former Vietnam soldier explained to me that it is important to keep your salt balance in good order. He explained: “If you lick some salt from your finger, and it tastes slightly of sugar, you are in need of more salt.”
At this 1983 event, the media forgot to prosecute CO2, SUVs and fossil fuels, for causing this heat wave.
Yes. The salt balance is important and I am surprised it does not get the media attention it deserves. I recall that a 4 hour watch in the engine room of one of Her Majesty’s Cruisers (HMS Ceylon) in the Red Sea required the consumption of the Lime water provided measured in gallons, PLUS a handful of the salt tablets. If you ignored the salt tablets you were in trouble, health wise.
Those with diabetes advised to be be careful with their salt intake should be made aware of this.
Having cycled all day in tropical Australian summer once, we ordered lemonade and asked for salt to add to it when we reached a pub (bar) at the end of the day. The patrons thought we were mad.
I learned that one in a summer in India. Very useful to know. Electrolytes are best, but salt is better than nothing.
Carl, working beside a coal-boiler in summer, the temp could easily reach 120F+. Salt tablets and LOTS of cold water, drinking and soaked in a rag around the neck, made it tolerable for several hrs managing the jobs (the welders had it even tougher, but could still manage).
30 years or its a data point with 29 years of missing links.
Robin Williams (as Adrian Kronauer) said it all in “Good Morning Vietnam” –
“It’s hot, damn hot, so hot you could do some crotchpot cookin'”
“It’s hot, fool, were you born on the sun?”
Where I come from it’s so damn hot that the birds fly backwards to keep their ar$es cool.
Time to dust off this 2012 article from WUWT on the siting of the new Badwater station in Death Valley: a set-up for future records. I suggested in the below comment at the time that we should bookmark the article for this very eventuality today and Anthony replied “Good idea”. Link leads to my comment with the article above it:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/13/dr-jeff-masters-shows-why-siting-matters-death-valley-steals-all-time-temperature-record-from-libya/#comment-896896
The table of temperatures in Death valley over the years is really rather boring. What happened to global warming?
134 is a bogus record
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/an-investigation-of-death-valleys-134f-world-temperature-record.html