World Meteorological Organization Assessment of the Purported World Record 58°C Temperature Extreme at El Azizia, Libya (13 September 1922)

Fadli, Khalid I. El; Cerveny, Randall S.; Burt, Christopher C.; Eden, Philip; Parker, D. E.; Brunet, Manola; Peterson, Thomas C.; Mordacchini, Gianpaolo; Pelino, Vinicio; Bessemoulin, P.; Stella, José Luis; Driouech, Fatima; Wahab, M. M. Abdel; Pace, Matthew B.

doi:10.1175/bams-d-12-00093.1

Cited by 44 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Burt (2004) contains a good compilation of U.S. temperature records. The Death Valley extreme is now regarded as the world's hottest naturally occurring temperature (El Fadli et al 2013).…”

Section: Data Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Extreme U.S. Temperatures

Lee

Lund

2014

Journal of Climate

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This paper develops trend estimation techniques for monthly maximum and minimum temperature time series observed in the 48 conterminous United States over the last century. While most scientists concur that this region has warmed on aggregate, there is no a priori reason to believe that temporal trends in extremes and averages will exhibit the same patterns. Indeed, under minor regularity conditions, the sample partial sum and maximum of stationary time series are asymptotically independent (statistically). Previous authors have suggested that minimum temperatures are warming faster than maximum temperatures in the United States; such an aspect can be investigated via the methods discussed in this study. Here, statistical models with extreme value and changepoint features are used to estimate trends and their standard errors. A spatial smoothing is then done to extract general structure. The results show that monthly maximum temperatures are not often greatly changing-perhaps surprisingly, there are many stations that show some cooling. In contrast, the minimum temperatures show significant warming. Overall, the southeastern United States shows the least warming (even some cooling), and the western United States, northern Midwest, and New England have experienced the most warming.

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“…Burt (2004) contains a good compilation of U.S. temperature records. The Death Valley extreme is now regarded as the world's hottest naturally occurring temperature (El Fadli et al 2013).…”

Section: Data Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Extreme U.S. Temperatures

Lee

Lund

2014

Journal of Climate

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“…If temperature observations exceed a record, the dewpoints are synergistically flagged. Recent analyses of the record Libyan temperature have resulted in a change to the global and African temperature record (El Fadli et al, 2012). Any observations that would be flagged using the new value but not by the old are likely to have been flagged by another test.…”

Section: Test 7: Known Records Checkmentioning

confidence: 99%

HadISD: a quality-controlled global synoptic report database for selected variables at long-term stations from 1973–2011

et al. 2012

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Abstract. This paper describes the creation of HadISD: an automatically quality-controlled synoptic resolution dataset of temperature, dewpoint temperature, sea-level pressure, wind speed, wind direction and cloud cover from global weather stations for 1973-2011. The full dataset consists of over 6000 stations, with 3427 long-term stations deemed to have sufficient sampling and quality for climate applications requiring sub-daily resolution. As with other surface datasets, coverage is heavily skewed towards Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes.The dataset is constructed from a large pre-existing ASCII flatfile data bank that represents over a decade of substantial effort at data retrieval, reformatting and provision. These raw data have had varying levels of quality control applied to them by individual data providers. The work proceeded in several steps: merging stations with multiple reporting identifiers; reformatting to netCDF; quality control; and then filtering to form a final dataset. Particular attention has been paid to maintaining true extreme values where possible within an automated, objective process. Detailed validation has been performed on a subset of global stations and also on UK data using known extreme events to help finalise the QC tests. Further validation was performed on a selection of extreme events world-wide (Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the cold snap in Alaska in 1989 and heat waves in SE Australia in 2009). Some very initial analyses are performed to illustrate some of the types of problems to which the final data could be applied. Although the filtering has removed the poorest station records, no attempt has been made to homogenise the data thus far, due to the complexity of retaining the true distribution of high-resolution data when applying adjustments. Hence non-climatic, time-varying errors may still exist in many of the individual station records and care is needed in inferring long-term trends from these data.This dataset will allow the study of high frequency variations of temperature, pressure and humidity on a global basis over the last four decades. Both individual extremes and the overall population of extreme events could be investigated in detail to allow for comparison with past and projected climate. A version-control system has been constructed for this dataset to allow for the clear documentation of any updates and corrections in the future.

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“…This would not have been categorized as an ‘extreme’ value as similarly low values were observed throughout all seasons of 1941 and could thus possibly be due to a new inexperienced observer misreading the temperature by using the wrong end of the instrument's recording pin, as has been previously raised for other regions (e.g. El Fadli et al , ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A homogenized long‐term temperature record for the Western Cape Province in South Africa: 1916–2013

Lakhraj‐Govender

Grab

Ndebele

2016

Intl Journal of Climatology

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To establish precise climate trend analyses, highly reliable and accurate homogenous historical climate data are required. To this end, we undertake a robust quality control and homogenization process of daily Tmax and Tmin data (1916–2013) for the Western Cape Province, South Africa, using RClimDex, ProClimDB and Anclim software. Inhomogeneities were detected using the pairwise method in AnClim, suggesting possible artificial shifts in the time series. The adjustment of time series utilized ProClimDB software to create reference series using highly correlated or nearest neighbour stations. Given few available long‐term data sets, the study is limited to eight suitable stations. The modified Mann Kendall test in XLSTAT 2015 software identified annual and seasonal trends in the newly homogenized monthly Tmax and Tmin data. Annual Tmax and Tmin adjusted data over the Western Cape region indicate statistically significant increasing temperature trends over the period 1916–2013, with the exception of an insignificant decreasing Tmax trend at Cape St Blaize. A statistically significant increasing trend (0.13 °C/decade) for all stations used in this study is recorded for the common period 1937–2001. The seasonal trends also support significant increasing trends, with the exception of Tmax trends for summer (−0.03 °C/decade) and autumn (0 °C/decade) at Kirstenbosch.

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World Meteorological Organization Assessment of the Purported World Record 58°C Temperature Extreme at El Azizia, Libya (13 September 1922)

Abstract: Due to problems with instrumentation, siting, and observational procedures, the WMO has invalidated the 90-year-old record forthe world's highest temperature.

Cited by 44 publications

References 13 publications

Trends in Extreme U.S. Temperatures

Trends in Extreme U.S. Temperatures

HadISD: a quality-controlled global synoptic report database for selected variables at long-term stations from 1973–2011

A homogenized long‐term temperature record for the Western Cape Province in South Africa: 1916–2013

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