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The earth has a lot of warm places: forest fires, lava floes, iron foundries, the inside
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of your toaster oven, nuclear reactors, and so forth. But, if we're just talking about
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regular old sun-heats-the-earth climate and weather, where on the earth's surface is hottest?
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Some might say "Death Valley," which isn't a bad guess, as the 56.7°Celsius temperature
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observed 100 years ago on July 10, 1913-- at aptly named Furnace Creek -- remains, according
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to official weather statistics, the highest temperature ever recorded.
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However, weather stations measure air temperature in the shade about a meter and a half above
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the ground. And as you know if you've ever walked barefoot across a beach on a hot day,
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surfaces in direct sunlight can be a lot hotter than the air just above them.
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Plus, there are only 11,119 official weather stations scattered across the globe, which
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equates to only 1 station every 13,000 square kilometers, or about six on average for an
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area the size of Scotland (not that Scotland is a leading candidate for heat waves). Super
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hot places like deserts are particularly harsh and remote, making weather stations impractical
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and even less common.
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So to find the true hottest place on earth, we need an army of meteorology students to
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install and monitor thermometers on every inch of the planet. Or we could measure the
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the temperature of the earth from space... which NASA does, every day. The Terra and
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Aqua satellites carry instruments called spectroradiometers which detect the infrared radiation, that
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is, the heat, radiating from the Earth's surface. Their resolution isn't amazing, since the
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satellites measure temperature averaged over each square kilometer of the globe, but that's
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still 13,000 times better than weather stations.
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And the winner for hottest square kilometer on earth? Not Furnace Creek - it only clocked
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in at 62.7C. Not the "Scorched Wheat" plateau in the Lut Desert of Iran, either, despite
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repeated claims to be the hottest place on earth. However, it's close - a nearby portion
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of the Lut Desert is the winner at 70.7C, or 159.3F. That's one degree hotter than you
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need for the proteins in an egg yolk to coagulate - that is, to cook. No need for your toaster
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oven - breakfast is served.