The hottest place in the world?
Clint McMahon, a student at Seneca College in Toronto, wanted to know the hottest place on Earth. I enjoy questions on weather extremes such as the coldest, windiest, hottest. Determining what place is the hottest depends largely on whether you mean the hottest day, month, or year on average or on record. Let’s agree that it’s the location with the highest temperature ever recorded. Well, it isn’t near the equator, where high humidity, cloudiness and frequent rains keep temperatures from soaring. The hottest places on earth are in the great deserts – the Sahara, Arabian, and Great Australian Deserts. In deserts, the combination of clear skies and dry air leads to an intense heating of the sand and bare rock, which heats the air just above it. The world’s highest temperature record belongs to El Aziza, Libya in the northern Sahara, when on September 22, 1922 the temperature in the shade reached a scorching 58 (136F). This beat the previous record of 57, observed in Death Valley Californ
