THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL Organization has said it will work to verify a temperature of 54.4 degrees Celsius recorded in Death Valley in California yesterday.
If correct, it’s the hottest temperature recorded on the planet for 89 years, it added.
The temperature was recorded at the appropriately-named Furnace Creek Visitor Centre in Death Valley on the west at 3.41pm local time.
It may also be the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in the world, as experts argue over whether the 56.6 degrees reported in the same location in 1913 was accurate.
A 2016 analysis from weather historian Christopher Burt cast doubt on the temperatures reported in 1913 as “essentially not possible from a meteorological perspective”.
In 2013, a temperature of 53.9 degrees was also reported in Death Valley.
The west coast of the US is in the midst of a heatwave at present, which meteorologists expect to last for the next two days. While temperatures are expected to dip from Wednesday, warmer than average weather will continue for the next week or so.
Elsewhere in California, wildfires have blazed in the past week during the statewide heatwave and a number of outages have left thousands without power.
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