Professional Article Debunking Death Valley’s 134F Temperature is Published

This entry written in February, 2026

I was contacted by Dr. Roy Spencer (of the University of Alabama in Huntsville) in November, 2024, regarding my research on the (dubious) maximum temperature reports at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley during July 1913. Spencer had just completed some comparisons of Greenland Ranch maximums with those at the other closest stations, much like what I have been doing since my thesis work began in the 1980s. He found that many of the Greenland Ranch maximums in July appear to have a high bias during its first ten years of record (1911-1920). Spencer had been referred to the research on my blog by his colleague at Huntsville, Dr. John Christy, and he asked me for my thoughts on how and why some of the maximum temperature reports have a warm bias.

Spencer’s findings, including a response by me, were soon posted on his web site. The first post by Spencer (Part 1) can be found towards the bottom of this link, my response (Part 2) is above that, in the middle, and a follow-up by Spencer (Part 3) is on the top.

A week or so later, on November 16, 2024, Spencer and Christy asked me to co-author a professional paper which would discredit the 134F world-record temperature set at Greenland Ranch in 1913! I was elated, of course, as this would be a major step forward towards getting the World Meteorological Organization and National Weather Service to formally toss the old record. The three of us decided on having the paper appear in BAMS (the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society). After a revision or two or three, and after receiving some very helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms by the reviewers, our article appeared online about a year later. It was published in the January 2026 hard copy issue of BAMS.

Death Valley Illusion: Evidence against the 134°F World Record

BAMS January 2026 issue

The AMS web site provided a “headline” article in November 2025 which highlights the BAMS article.

Earlier in 2025, another professional article appeared which casts much doubt upon the July 1913 maximums at Greenland Ranch. This one is titled:

“The 1913 maximum temperature world record at Death Valley: should we expect a new record in the near future?“

by Reinhold Steinacker.

Steinacker’s article utilizes the same types of comparisons that I have made in demonstrating that the 134F record maximum is likely bogus. My blog here on Stormbruiser is referenced twice in the bibliography of the article. It is quite obvious that Steinacker’s article was heavily influenced by the research on my blog here…in my opinion! His article serves as an excellent complement, or counterpart, to the 2026 BAMS article by Spencer and Christy and Reid in discrediting the record. Here is a blurb from the abstract:

 A critical review is given on this maximum temperature world record of 134°F or 56.7°C, set on 10 July 1913. Different evaluations like comparison with neighbor stations, comparison with 20th century re-analyses and measures of dispersion are carried out. They all show that this record is highly questionable, because no physical mechanism is known, which could explain such a statistical outlier of the maximum temperature on a local scale over desert regions.

I plan on providing an entry here on Stormbruiser soon to comment on Steinacker’s interesting article.