Ground Temperatures Hit 129 Degrees as Argentina Suffers Blackouts
The country is suffering through a heat wave that knocked out power in Buenos Aires and challenged all-time records
Ground temperatures climbed above 129 degrees Fahrenheit (54 degrees Celsius) in parts of Argentina this week as the country suffers through a shockingly hot start to summer. Air temperatures were equally suffocating, leading to widespread blackouts as the Southern Cone attempts to beat the heat.
Copernicus’s Sentinel 3 satellite recorded the extreme ground temperatures. Those temperatures are different than air temperatures, which is our usual way of conveying how hot a place is. The surface of the Earth tend to be hotter than air temperatures, given that heat can more easily dissipate in the air.
But air temperatures are still pretty unbearable in Argentina. On Tuesday, temperatures rose to 106.7 degrees Fahrenheit (41.5 degrees Celsius) in Buenos Aires, the second-highest reading in the city in more than 100 years of records. Other parts of the country saw temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius).
The heat was so bad in Argentina on Tuesday that it was briefly the hottest place in the world, surpassing parts of Australia that usually have that honor during austral summer.
“This is a heat wave of extraordinary characteristics, with extreme temperature values that will even be analyzed after its completion, and it may generate some historical records for Argentina temperatures and persistence of heat,” meteorologist Lucas Berengua told Reuters.
Infrastructure has sagged in the face of sweltering temperatures. Around 700,000 people were without power for hours on Tuesday afternoon as temperatures rose and the grid struggled; the city’s electric providers blamed increased demand from cooling during the heatwave. The agency that provides drinking water also asked residents to take conservation measures, saying that its purification system was affected during the outage.
The ground temperatures recorded this week echo readings in the northern hemisphere a few months ago, and are a foreboding warning to the southern hemisphere as it begins its summer. A scorching summer last year made ground temperatures spike in Turkey during wildfire season, in the Pacific Northwest during that region’s heatwave.
“I was always born here in a temperate climate and I saw how the temperature changed over the years, and it is not what we’re used to,” Marta Lorusso, an architect and a resident of Buenos Aires, told Reuters.
Unfortunately, the heat isn’t letting up any time soon. The forecast calls for temperatures to reach around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) through Friday, before the heat finally breaks this weekend.
See more here: gizmodo.com
Header image: Kayak
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T. C. Clark
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Argentina has a history of heat waves. The race car driver Juan Manuel Fangio was in a race in Argentina in the 1950’s that other race teams were using relief drivers due to the heat…Fangio was world champion and the race was in his home country so he felt that he had to not use a relief driver…he won he race but may have damaged his heart. He said he tried to imagine that he was in a tub of ice water.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
“Ground temperatures climbed above 129 degrees Fahrenheit (54 degrees Celsius) in parts of Argentina this week as the country suffers through a shockingly hot start to summer. Those temperatures are different than air temperatures, which is our usual way of conveying how hot a place is. The surface of the Earth tend to be hotter than air temperatures, given that heat can more easily dissipate in the air.”
Yuma AZ USA, July 4, 2021, 64.3C ave, 65.1C max, 63.8C min the previous hour at 3pm. 64.3C is about 144F.
(https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/products/hourly02/2021/CRNH0203-2021-AZ_Yuma_27_ENE.txt)
So these Argentina ground temperatures near the beginning its summer season are nothing special. All it takes at the beginning of a summer season are clear skies and a dry ground for several, many, days before this date to heat up the soil beneath the surface. 47.6C at 5cm depth and 38.1C at 10cm depth.
A question: Why do you suspect that this article’s author switched from ‘Scientific’ and ‘Argentina’ Celsius temperatures to ‘USA’ Fahrenheit temperatures???
Have a good day, Jerry
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Tom
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Come on up north, we have plenty of 10 degree weather to cool you down a bit.
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Kevin
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…….and six months ago Argentina, Brazil and others were suffering unusually cold conditions and so it goes, up and down, round and around
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James P. Bradley
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We’ll just go ahead and blast out the heat island effect we calculated from hundreds of miles away in the concrete and metal rooftop area that is known as Buenos Aires as the “ground temperature” of some parts of Argentina. “Some parts” of Argentina also have heat exhaust units in our measurement area, but we’ll just go ahead and ignore that in our models. But they’re super red.
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