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The notoriously extreme climate of Death Valley records shows significant variability in the long-term, including a 35% increase in precipitation in the last 40 years.
Death Valley National Park, California, is widely known for its extreme hot and dry climate. High summer temperatures, low humidity, high evaporation, and low precipitation characterize the valley, of which over 1300 km^sup 2^ (500 mi^sup 2^) are below sea level (Fig. 1). The extreme summer climate attracts great interest: July and August visitation in Death Valley National Park has doubled in the last 10 years. From June through August, the average temperature at Furnace Creek, Death Valley [54 m (177 ft) below sea level] is 98°F (37°C).1 Daytime high temperatures typically exceed 90°F (32°C) more than half of the year, and temperatures above 120°F (49°C) occur 5-20 times each year. Even the minimum temperature of summer nights can remain above 100°F (38°C), which occurs nowhere else in the United States.
Death Valley's extreme climate is of great interest to researchers and the general public from all over the world, even if they are not planning to visit the region. Although several older reports and analyses of Death Valley's climate exist, none has compiled the complete weather records available for Furnace Creek from 1911 onward. This report presents the complete daily weather observations for the Furnace Creek (formerly Greenland Ranch) weather station through 2002. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures, and daily precipitation amounts, were gathered from several sources and compiled into a single database. In this paper, we describe the data sources and briefly summarize the climate of Death Valley. We explain why Death Valley is so hot and dry, and compare the climate of Death Valley with other regions in the world. The complete dataset is available (from the authors) to enable researchers of all ages to explore and analyze the climate of Death Valley and to compare their local climate to that of Death Valley. While exploring these data from Death Valley, please recognize that climate observations from a single location do not provide a solid basis for reconstructing regional patterns and trends.
DEATH VALLEY PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND EARLY HISTORY. Death Valley is in the Mojave Desert in the westernmost basin and range province about 320 km...