summer temps in ME are not always as they seem
by
lefty warmonger
09/13/2007, 4:47 AM #
Although I don't have any direct experience in or necessarily even about Iraq, I currently live next door in Kuwait and can without a doubt state that the "official highest Asian temperature" of 124 is a load of bollocks and so too I suspect are the mean max temp figures for August and July.
Here in Kuwait, according to the generally untrusted and deliberately not so accurate official weather service, the average max temp during July was 115 F/45C - rising to 116F in August. Unofficially, July was (and always is) considerably more furnace-like than August - leading one to question the official stats.
When questioned, and combined with not officially sanctioned thermometers showing July temps hitting the mid to high 50s in Celcius (131-138F), the experience of those unfortunate enough to park in direct sunlight and risk 3rd degree burns when touching anything in or on the car, my own car external thermometer rising from 45C/113F to 50C/122F (the maximum temp it will display) within minutes of having the car and engine washed with cool water (at 5:00 p.m. - 3 hours of cooling after the "official" max temp of 45C/113F was recorded), and a host of other recorded info and anecdotal accounts leads one to not just question but outright disbelieve official temperature records.
Of course, the worst kept secret in Kuwait is why the official max temp in July and August (and for a few weeks on either side) is typically lowered by approx 10C/50F before it is released to the public. Kuwait, like many of the GCC countries, is a signatory to a wide range of widely ignored international agreements. Among these are a number of labour standards and protections - one of which is the maximum temp at which outdoor work must cease. This temp is reached when recorded temps rise above 50C/122F and, coincidentally, the official temp in Kuwait (and much of the Gulf region) never, ever exceeds 50C - even on those days where the official temp of 50 seems a lot hotter than the 50C of the day before. Everyone goes along with this because a) they don't really give a shit about the largely imported labour force and b) nobody in or out of Kuwait is willing to restrict outdoor oil and gas work to anything less than 24/7 given its overwhelmingly dominant role in Kuwait's economy (and in the economies of Saudi, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Iraq, and in shiny Dubai whose success is inexorably linked to flows of capital and visitors from its oil producing neighbour).
So, before you get to trusting with your weather sources and the mean max temp of 110F in Iraq, you may want to question where their data is being sourced from - i.e. local government sources, US military instrumentation, etc. For instance, many weather bulletings, info sources, etc, (particularly for counties off the beaten track) simply use the data provided by local government agencies typically located an an international airport and, as noted above, these are not typically very accurate.
