KUWAIT: Kuwait recorded the world's highest temperature in recent years, UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) experts said yesterday. Head of the Meteorology Department at the Kuwait Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) Hassan Dashti told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the WMO commission of experts adopted, at a meeting earlier yesterday, an official decision that the highest temperature recorded was in Mitribah in northeastern Kuwait of 53.9 degrees Celsius on July 21, 2016. The WMO added Turbat in Pakistan recorded a temperature of 53.7 degrees Celsius on May 28, 2017. These are the highest, officially-recognized temperatures to have been recorded in the last 76 years.

According to Dashti, this was confirmed according to a report by the commission, which groups 18 international experts, including from Kuwait. Dashti said the locally recorded temperature is the highest ever recorded for Asia and third warmest temperature on record globally after Death Valley in eastern California, which registered the highest temperature of 56.7 degrees in 1913, and the Tunisian governorate of Kebili with 55 degrees Celsius in 1931. But some weather historians have questioned the accuracy of old temperature records.

The task of the WMO committee is not limited to recording temperatures. It also examines various weather and climate phenomena. Dashti commended Kuwait's determination and unprecedented methodology to provide the committee with data and facts that will help make decisions linked to dealing with extreme weather. - Agencies