Nawabshah may have endured hottest-ever April temperature on earth

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

Nawabshah, one of the bustling cities in the southern part of Pakistan, has been in the global headlines once more for having endured probably the hottest day ever on the planet of earth during the month of April. 

According to a report published in The Washington Post, Nawabshah’s recorded temperature of 122.4 degrees (50.2 Celsius) on April 30, 2018, might just be the highest temperature ever reliably measured on earth during April. 

Jason Samenow, The Washington Post’s weather editor and Capital Weather Gang's chief meteorologist, quoted the Twitter post of Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist at Meteo France. Kapikian’s tweet shad aid that it was the warmest April temperature ever recorded in Pakistan and for the entire Asian continent.

Christopher Burt, an acclaimed expert on global weather extremes, not only endorsed the views but also went a step further declaring that it probably was also the highest temperature “yet reliably observed on earth in modern records.” 

“The competing hottest April temperature of 123.8 degrees (51.0 Celsius) set in Santa Rosa, Mexico, in April 2001, is of dubious reliability,” Burt noted. 

However, it could not be officially found out if Nawabshah’s 122.4 degrees was a world April record because the World Meteorological Organization does not conduct official reviews of such monthly temperature extremes. 

But Randy Cerveny, who serves as rapporteur for the agency’s committee on extreme records, trusted Burt’s findings.

April 2018 was the second straight month in which Nawabshah set a new monthly temperature record for Pakistan. 

In late March, a heat wave pushed the temperature there to a national record of 113.9 degrees for the month. 

Several other countries in Asia also had established March record highs during the hot spell from the 29 to 31. 

The record-setting 122.4 degree reading in Nawabshah added to a long list of international hot weather extremes since 2017, which includes Spain’s and Iran’s highest temperatures ever recorded last summer. 

In May 2017, the western Pakistan town of Turbat had hit 128.3 degrees, tying the all-time highest temperature in that country and the world-record temperature for that month.