Heat index in Iran hits staggering 163 degrees

Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, soared to a staggering heat index of 163 degrees Friday afternoon as a heat wave continued to bake the Middle East, already one of the hottest places on earth.
"That was one of the most incredible temperature observations I have ever seen, and it is one of the most extreme readings ever in the world," AccuWeather meteorologist Anthony Sagliani said in a statement.
While the temperature was "only" 115 degrees, the dew point was an unfathomable 90 degrees. On Thursday, the Iranian city of about 100,000 reached a heat index of 154 degrees. The combination of heat and humidity, measured by the dew point, is what makes the heat index — or what the temperature actually feels like outside.
"A strong ridge of high pressure has persisted over the Middle East through much of July, resulting in the extreme heat wave in what many would consider one of the hottest places in the world," Sagliani said.
Baghdad sweltered to its all-time record high on Thursday when temperatures soared to 124 degrees, AccuWeather reported. The heat was so bad that Iraq's Council of Ministers declared a four-day mandatory holiday throughout the country starting Thursday.
Little relief is in the forecast. "The ridge of high pressure will remain in place across the Middle East through at least the next week, so more oppressive heat and humidity, and more astounding apparent temperatures, are likely through the next several days," Sagliani said.
Along with the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia and the Gulf of Aden coast of Somalia, thePersian Gulf region is known for a fierce combination of heat and humidity, according to the book Extreme Weather by Christopher Burt. Sea water temperatures there can be in the upper 80s and low 90s, he writes, so the ocean "has no cooling effect on coastal communities and provides an ample source of moisture in the form of humidity."
Though not an official record, the highest heat index ever recorded was in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Burt writes, when it hit 178 degrees in July 2003.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Climate Change Skeptics Lash Out At New Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Study That Questions Ocean Temperature Measurements

Image
Share on facebook 227 Share on twitter 22 Share on linkedin Share on google_plusone_share More Sharing Services 128 An estimated 35,000 walruses are pictured crowding on a beach near Point Lay, Alaska, because of a lack of sea ice in this September 2014 photo. A study published June 4, 2015, refuting the notion that the Earth’s temperature rise has been interrupted since 1998 was lambasted by the usual skeptics and their supporters.  Corey Accardo/NOAA/NMFS/AFSC/NMML/Via Reuters A new climate study was released Thursday that refutes the claim that there’s been a slowdown, or “hiatus” in the rate the Earth is warming, but some conservative-leaning media sites skipped covering the study itself and chose instead to promote the views of the minority of climate change deniers, such as  Christopher Monckton . For example, the Drudge Report, an immensely popular headline aggregator operated by conservative Matthew Drudge, promi...
Read more

Global warming could drive world temperatures up 7 degrees by 2100

Another piece of the  global warming  puzzle has been revealed. According to new research published on Jan. 1 in the journal  Nature , increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reduce the number of clouds that form. This, in turn, will cause temperatures to rise much higher than previous climate-change models have predicted. According to this new research, global temperatures could rise 4 degrees Celsius or 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, and twice that by 2200. Lead researcher Steven Sherwood at the Climate Change Research Center at Australia's University of New South Wales, told  The Guardian  that this level of climate change would be "catastrophic rather than simply dangerous. For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet."   In a  news release , Sherwood said this new...
Read more

Why Is Critical Technology to Stop Global Warming Stalled?

Image
Pumping CO2 underground can help fight climate change but remains untested for the most part March 12, 2015  | By  Howard J. Herzog  and  The Conversation US Injection of CO2 and other gases into geological formations has been practiced for many years.  Credit:  SaskPower There are many uncertainties with respect to global climate change, but there is one thing about which I have no doubts: we will not solve climate change by running out of fossil fuels. Understanding this leads to three posible pathways we can follow to lower greenhouse gas concentrations, and explains why I’ve chosen to focus  my research  on carbon capture and storage. We can: continue to burn fossil fuels with little or no restrictions. We will blow by atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 450 parts per million (ppm), the level many scientists think is dangerous to exceed, and we will keep on going. We have enough fossil fuels to easily go above 1,000 ppm. The impac...
Read more