Hottest Place in the World Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 27, 11:35AM EDT

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Hottest Place in the World Today — © JJ Gouin / Getty Images

Parts of Texas and Arizona are baking at temperatures above 110°F today. Phoenix recently endured a 30-day stretch exceeding this level. This extreme heat raises the question – can people survive at these temperatures, especially without air conditioning or other means of cooling? In some parts of the world, the heat is even more intense, forcing people to consider abandoning places that are becoming unlivable.

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Today the temperature reached 120°F in Basrah-Hussen, Iraq, part of a region where extreme daytime heat is common. This area spanning parts of Iraq, Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait frequently sees temperatures this high, combined with scarce rainfall.

Basra is located on the Arabian Peninsula on the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway, which runs into the Persian Gulf. It is also just north of the border of Kuwait. With a population of 1.3 million, it is the second-largest city in Iraq.
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Today’s temperature is below Basrah’s record high of 129°F set on July 22, 2016.

Temperatures exceeding 110°F pose hazards to human health. As NBC News reports, when the body can no longer shed excess heat – a condition called heat stress – core temperature rises. This can lead to confusion, nausea, dizziness, headaches, or fainting.

The portion of the world that will be uninhabitable is growing. Basrah-Hussen is just one example of the problem. (This is the hottest day on record in every state.)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.