Record-breaking temperatures were recorded across the country this year, but the new record for the highest temperature ever, in California’s Death Valley, is actually an old record made new.

Ninety years after the all-time highest temperature of 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit was allegedly recorded in El Azizia, Libya, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has tossed out that reading and moved Death Valley—and its 134-degree reading from July 10, 1913—to the top of the list.

The September 13, 1922, Libya temperature recording was deemed inaccurate and the likely reasons were operator error and a suspect thermometer. “We're pretty sure that the person who was tasked with taking the measurements using this instrument didn't know how to use it,” according to Randy Cerveny, the WMO researcher who headed a probe of the suspect Libya temperature begun in 2010.

Cerveny’s group decided that the man who made the Libya notations was probably inexperienced and improperly read the numbers from an arcane thermometer. Numbers were entered into a logsheet in the wrong columns and they didn’t jibe with other recordings made in the area around the same time. The numbers were long considered suspect because the site’s location, 35 miles southwest of Tripoli, was too close to the Mediterranean Sea for that kind of heat.  

Global warming promises to deliver a real international threat to the record in the not-too-distant future, and if Death Valley is going to defend its #1 ranking it may have to rise above California’s overall performance. Climate Central, in noting that July was the hottest month on record in the lower 48 states, said California fared better than most.

When it came to record-breaking extreme heat, Wisconsin had the roughest summer based on the most high-temperature records and the disparity in the ration between record high and low temperatures. California was 46th. The Midwest dominated the Top 10, with Wisconsin followed by Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Colorado.

California broke 702 record-highs so far in 2012, averaging four broken records for each recording station in the state. The state had 1.9 more record high temperatures than record lows. That compares favorably to Wisconsin, which recorded 1,345 record-highs and 41 times more record high temperatures than record lows.    

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

What a Scorcher: California Ousts Libya for Heat Record (Agence France-Presse)

Death Valley Officially the Hottest Place Ever (by Helena Kaznowska, London Telegraph)

Waiting for Death Valley’s Big Bang (by Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That)

2012 Record Temperatures: Which States Led the Nation (Climate Central)