record at time of market creation: 56.7°C (134°F) https://wmo.asu.edu/content/world-highest-temperature
Related questions
@vincentpearce What happens in this market if the 1913 record is decertified? Would a new record have to beat the 1913 record to qualify for this market, or would it simply have to be the new record as of close date?
@EvanDaniel I don't think market creator has been active in a couple of months. I asked below a set of questions (that went unanswered) on some of the things that could happen with record decertification etc. and what to do about it.
I actually haven't thought about this question in a bit, but noticed I had a temporary profit spike of 3K and was trying to figure out where to see top YES holder dump all shares... Did Emily rage quit Manifold? Hope she is okay; I disagree with her in a lot but her comments were always very well thought out.
@AlQuinn We've been above 2 sigma for pretty much the whole year. We're no longer in "statistical deviation around the mean" territory, so it doesn't make sense to take that as a prior.
@Mqrius not where it counts (in Furnace Creek, for example). And yet again, let me point out the record to break is not a real temperature reading. 134F never happened and it's never gotten anywhere close.
@Mqrius by analogy, let's imagine in 1913 someone used a yardstick 32" long and measured the world's tallest person to be 3 yards tall = 9ft tall. Then you say "but people have gotten taller on average over the last 100 years!", to which I say, yes of course they have, but we don't use 32" long yardsticks anymore.
@vincentpearce a few things I'd like to clarify:
1) If the WMO puts the 1913 record under review prior to the end of the decade but doesn't definitively rule either way on its validity by the end of 2029 AND there is no temperature >134F in the 2020s, will this market resolve NO?
2) If there is a candidate temperature reading in the 2020s of >134F but the WMO had not certified it yet by the end of 2029, will this market resolve (YES or NO?), or will you keep it open pending the final outcome of the WMO judgement?
3) If there is a temperature that ties (but does not exceed) the record in the 2020s, will this resolve NO?
@AlQuinn oh and I didn't know WMO is respecting the Kebili 131F reading (which is also bullshit), but turns out they are, so the route for this to resolve YES (if 131F not exceeded in 2020s) would require 2 historical temperature records to be overturned.
Each 1F increase in the Furnace creek record (128 >> 129 >> 130) took ~20-30 years to achieve, so even a >131F reading this decade seems unlikely
So given the way this question is written, and given some cursory analysis below suggesting a reading over 134F is very unlikely, this question is effectively about the potential of WMO to decertify the 1913 reading (i.e. this is about bureaucracy not climate/weather). Here is an account of one of the people who may have influenced the 136F Libya record to be tossed last decade: https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/world-heat-record-overturneda-personal-account.html though worth noting that WMO seems to open these investigations up only under extraordinary circumstances. So far, much has been written by both Christopher Burt and William Reid (seemingly the top critics) on the bogus 134F temp record, but there has been no obvious moves by WMO to reinvestigate. Unlike the Libya record (where a new recorder made an obvious mistake in the temperature logs during his first days on the job), the Furnace Creek 1913 record would need to be overturned on the basis of somewhat more circumstantial evidence, such as a lack of correlation with other stations in the region. In the case of Libya, it was Dr. Randall Cerveny who was/is on the WMO panel in some capacity who helped muster the wherewithall to audit that record after having info forwarded to him by Christopher Burt.
It's worth noting that, if the 134 F record is found to be invalid by the WMO, then this market almost certainly resolves as YES as soon as the 129.9 F recordings from 2020 and 2021 are verified (which I think will probably be this year or next.) Those would be the new record temperatures, and they were set in the 2020s.
@Joshua That's entirely possible, but it could also have been a freak heatwave or something. The WMO seems to think it's legit, but I don't know how they determine the legitimacy of temperature records so long after they're read. Clearly there's some way of doing it, since the Libya record was eventually decertified, but...
The highest reported air temperature so far this decade is 129.9 Fahrenheit, barely more than four degrees below the record. We're only about a third of the way through the decade, and just measured the warmest month in recorded history. A temperature of 134.1 or more before 2030 looks very likely (though not certain.) I'll update this after doing some more research as part of my M.A. this fall.
EDIT: I should mention it's an M.A. in climate science. I don't mean to sound overconfident here, but betting against me is probably not a good idea unless you've also got a degree in a related field.
If the 1913 record were to be decertified, the highest established recorded air temperature on Earth would be 54.0 °C (129.2 °F), also recorded in Death Valley on 20 June 2013, and in Mitribah, Kuwait on 21 July 2016.[8] There have since been higher readings of 54.4 °C (129.9 °F) in August 2020 and July 2021, both at Furnace Creek, that are pending validation.
If the Furnace Creek readings are validated (which they likely will be,) they would be the hottest air temperatures recorded in about 90 years.
Death Valley also hit about 128 F this summer. (The thermometer at Furnace Creek read 130, but the official high was 128.)
@jskf it's worth noting that rises in global average temperature are skewed towards cold places getting less cold far more than hot places getting hotter. The conditions that have rise to the 2013 ~130F reading were exceptional, but hitting 134F would take a miracle, since the guy who was stationed at Furnace Creek during the 1913 summer was incompetent and/or a whackjob and/or took a shitty reading because he wanted the bragging rights to the measurement. I didn't do the stats since the exact data too hard to find but am guessing 134 is at least a 2 std deviation departure from typical summer highs. I am thinking generously 5%/year odds which is ~30% this decade. But I'll keep buying in the range above 50% while I can! Wish I could interact with evergreen (who is clearly a thoughtful person) but they blocked me for no apparent reason (though worth noting i am generally a terrible person, so understandable)
@evergreenemily Quote from the World Meteorological Organization about the Furnace Creek readings (which they're still trying to verify as of July of this year:)
If validated, this would be the highest temperature on Earth since 1931 and third hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet.
...
An initial assessment indicated that the observations were legitimate. The equipment at Furnace Creek meteorological station is maintained regularly by the National Weather Service in Las Vegas. Preliminary findings indicate it was in proper working condition at the time of the observations.
In other words: we've already reached the third-hottest temperature ever recorded and we did it in the first two years of a decade that's going to be the warmest in recorded history.
@AlQuinn so I did find some suspicious but not-obviously-wrong high temp by year data for Furnace Creek and get an average max annual temp of 125F since 1912 (90+ data points, with ~15 years missing in the data for some reason). Standard deviation is 2.6F for that period.
Average temp is higher recently (due to avg global temps increasing, though some like William Reid have pointed to increased structures and vegetation around the station, causing reduced airflow and higher measured temps), so using 128F as a more representative recent average annual max temperature, it would be ~2.3 standard deviations to get to 134F.
95% of the annual highest temp measurements are prior to 8/17, so this year is effectively over as being record-setting (sorry southern hemisphere, u suck 😝 ), so that leaves 6 summers for a >2.3σ event.
@evergreenemily oh great climatologist, are there any good baby's first convection parameterizations that I can use in my diy climate model? I've gotten basic dynamics working but dang parameterizations are somehow even harder than cfd
Check out my soundcloud substack thread in ACX Discord
@marthinwurer I wish I could help you out with that, but I haven't gotten that far into the data/modeling side of things yet. I'll let you know if I find anything - I'm taking a lot of data science and GIS courses in the first year of my M.A., so it might come up!