The official record for the hottest place in the world, verified by the World Meteorological Organization, has stood since 1913, when a thermometer placed at a standard 1.5m off the ground in Furnace Creek in California’s Death Valley, recorded an air temperature of 56.7°C.
Despite its hostile conditions this area is home to an array of wildlife including roadrunners, lizards like the chuckwalla, desert pupfish and kangaroo rat - aptly named seeing it can jump nine feet.
The ground can get hotter than the air, though. In 2005, a satellite measured a soil-surface temperature of 70.7°C in Iran’s Lut Desert, 2,278,015 ha of arid landscape in the country's southeast.
But although its landscape looks inhospitable life does survive there. The Lut Plain is home to Rüppell’s fox, sand cat, arrow snake, Golden and Black Scorpion to name just a few.
The top temperature though goes to the tarred rooftops in New York, which have been recorded reaching a scorching 82°C. Probably not much wildlife living ton the rooftops though...
- 10 desert animals that thrive in hostile conditions
- 10 desert plants - meet the species that thrive in extreme conditions
- Where is the coldest place on Earth?
What is the biggest desert in the world?
Strictly, a desert is defined as having less than 250mm of water a year falling from the sky. Antarctica – at 14,200,000km2 – is the clear winner, with an average of 150mm of water falling across the continent annually.
But if your desert has to be blisteringly hot, let’s go with Africa’s Sahara, which covers nearly a third of the continent, spanning 9,200,000km2. Swathes of the Sahara average less than 0.5mm of rain per year and decades pass with none at all.
Main image: Furnace Creek in California’s Death Valley © Getty Images