The ruling that the Lut outranks Death Valley—and by a long shot—comes from data collected over several years by a NASA satellite. The problem in finding hot spots is that not too many people want to stand around with a thermometer in places where cool is still more than 100 degree Fahrenheit. So the job was given to a satellite.
First, it should be noted that while Death Valley is hell on earth for Americans, a lot of other countries have wanted to claim the distinction over the years—though one might ask why!
In July 1913, observers in Furnace Creek, California—Death Valley—watched the thermometer reach 56.7º C (134º F) and declared it to be the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
But just nine years later, on September 13, 1922, a weather station in El Azizia, Libya, recorded a temperature of 58.0º C (136.4º F). According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), that remains the highest air temperature ever measured.
In October 2004, ecologist Steve Running visited Flaming Mountain on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert in China. He was told the surface of the mountain reached temperatures of 80º C (175º F) in the summer.
And that got Running thinking: exactly where is the hottest place on Earth? With some colleagues at the University of Montana, he did some research with NASA data and found that the location of the world’s hottest spot changes, though the conditions don’t. Think dry, rocky, and dark-colored lands.
“Yet most of the places that call themselves the hottest on Earth are not even serious contenders,” says Running. The reason is partly about where the measurements are made. But it is also a tale about how temperature is measured.
In the remote, sparsely populated areas that are likely to be the world’s hottest, weather stations are widely spaced. “The World Meteorological Organization has approximately 11,119 weather stations on Earth’s land surface collecting surface temperature observations,” notes David Mildrexler, also from the University of Montana. “When compared to the 144.68 million square kilometers of land surface, that’s one station every 13,012 square kilometers.”
“The Earth’s hot deserts—such as the Sahara, the Gobi, the Sonoran, and the Lut—are climatically harsh and so remote that access for routine measurements and maintenance of a weather station is impractical,” he adds. “The majority of Earth’s hottest spots are simply not being directly measured by ground-based instruments.”
That’s where satellites come in.
For a dozen years, NASA has operated the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) on two different satellites; first on Terra (launched in 1999) and then on Aqua (2002). The instrument has 36 different spectral bands (groups of wavelengths) and many ways to view the planet. One of them is the detection of thermal radiance, or the amount of infrared energy emitted by the land surface. Since the two MODIS instruments scan the entire surface each day, they can provide a complete picture of earthly temperatures and fill in the gaps between the weather stations.
It should be noted that this is a measure of surface temperature, not air temperature. It measures what you feel when you place your hand on the ground. Air temperature, which is what is reported by weathermen, is measured by a thermometer that is placed in a shadow away from the sun’s rays and at a height of two meters.
The satellites have produced seven years of complete data from 2003 through 2009. In five of those seven years—all but 2003 and 2007—the hottest surface temperature found each year was always in the same spot in the Dasht-e Lut.
And the single hottest land surface temperature (LST) recorded in any year and in any region was found there in 2005, when MODIS recorded a temperature of 70.7 C (159.3 F)—enough to commit Death Valley and Azizia to the cool regions.
As mentioned, there were two recent years when the hottest spot was not in the Lut. In 2003, the hottest spot found by the Aqua satellite was 69.3 C (156.7 F) in the badlands of Queensland, Australian. In 2008, the hottest recording was in the Turpan Basin of China, not far from Flaming Mountain, where the reading was 66.8 C (152.2 F).
That suggests that as further satellite data is collected over the decades, the Lut could lose the Number One Hellhole designation—albeit it not to those pikers, Death Valley and Azizia.
Dasht-e Lut is one of Iran’s two great deserts—Dasht-e Kavir, which start just to the east of Tehran, and the Lut, farther to the southeast. The Kavir is generally listed as the world’s 23rd largest desert and the Lut as the 25th largest.
The eastern Lut is mostly salt flats, But the center section has been sculpted by winds into dramatic ridges and furrows. The ridges, called yardangs, extend as long as 150 kilometers (100 miles) with heights of 75 meters (250 feet).
The hottest spot, just in case you wish to add it to your vacation list, is a large plateau, and extends over 480 square kilometers (185 square miles). It is known locally as Gandom-e Beryan or Toasted Wheat. It is 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Kerman. To be precise, it is at latitude 31.0562 north and longitude 57.6548 east. (See map on page three.)
The plateau is covered in dark lava, which absorbs the sun’s heat. The source of this lava rock is a bit of a mystery as there are no volcanoes in the vicinity. No roads lead to this remote plateau.
Temperatures on the top of the plateau are bearable only in the November-through-April period. The night sky is unusually clear and filled with stars, since this is one of the driest places on Earth and water vapor does not obscure the view.
There are no life forms reported and it seems there are no microorganisms either.
Theoretically, the maximum temperature of the soil, if it exceeds 70∞C, should be enough to fry an egg. So Gandom-e Beryan literally, if barely, qualifies as a frying pan.
As to the name “Scorched Wheat,” local legend says that in 1950s a caravan with camels was bringing a load of wheat through the desert. Due to an accident, the caravan had to leave the wheat near Gandom-e Beryan. A few days later, the drivers of another caravan found the abandoned load and reported the grains were toasted due to the heat.
The surroundings of Gandom-e Beryan have been described as having an other-worldly beauty. There is an effort to turn the area into an eco-tourism site.