The hottest desert in the world is the Mojave Desert of the United States, where Furnace Creek in Death Valley holds the official world record of 56.7 °C (134 °F), set on 10 July 1913 and still accepted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Second is the Arabian Desert, where Mitribah in Kuwait reached 53.9 °C on 21 July 2016, and third is China's Turpan Depression, where Sanbu township hit 52.2 °C on 16 July 2023. Those figures are air temperatures measured in shade at a weather station, the standard the WMO uses. Measured instead by how hot the ground gets, the winner is Iran's Dasht-e Lut, where satellites recorded a surface temperature of 70.7 °C in 2005, though no official station air record exists there.
Here is the full ranking: each desert once, scored by the hottest official reading taken at a weather station inside it, as listed in Wikipedia's national weather records (2026). The Sahara appears through Algeria's record, though Egypt (50.9 °C at Aswan), Sudan (49.7 °C at Dongola) and Niger (49.0 °C at Bilma) also set their national highs there.
| Rank | Country | Desert | Station | Record (date) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | Mojave (Death Valley) | Furnace Creek | 56.7 °C (10 July 1913) |
| 2 | Kuwait | Arabian | Mitribah | 53.9 °C (21 July 2016) |
| 3 | China | Turpan Depression | Sanbu, Turpan | 52.2 °C (16 July 2023) |
| 4 | Mexico | Sonoran (Colorado Desert) | Mexicali | 52.0 °C (28 July 1995) |
| 5 | Algeria | Sahara | Ouargla | 51.3 °C (5 July 2018) |
| 6 | India | Thar | Phalodi, Rajasthan | 51.0 °C (19 May 2016) |
| 7 | Australia | Outback interior | Oodnadatta | 50.7 °C (2 January 1960) |
| 8 | Turkmenistan | Karakum | Repetek | 50.1 °C (28 July 1983) |
| 9 | Uzbekistan | Kyzylkum | Uchquduq | 49.7 °C (18 July 2026) |
| 10 | Ethiopia | Danakil | Dallol | 48.9 °C (120 °F, 1966) |
Two caveats sit behind the top line. The 1913 Death Valley reading is contested: weather historians have argued it is at least 2.2 to 2.8 °C too high, and a 2026 study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society put the error at about 7.8 °C. The WMO still stands by it. Even without it, Furnace Creek keeps first place, with readings of 54.4 °C on 16 August 2020 and 9 July 2021 that are still awaiting validation. Kuwait's Mitribah reading was first reported as 54.0 °C and corrected by the WMO to 53.9 °C.
A few national records beat several deserts on this list but were set in cities on river plains with desert climates rather than inside a named desert, so they are left out: Basra in Iraq, on the Shatt al-Arab (53.9 °C), Ahvaz in Iran, on the Karun (53.7 °C), and Mohenjo-daro on the Indus and Turbat on the Kech River in Pakistan (53.5 °C).
The Sahara once held first place outright. For 90 years the world record was 57.8 °C, logged at 'Aziziya in Libya on 13 September 1922. In January 2012 the WMO decertified it after an investigation concluded that an inexperienced observer had probably misread a new instrument the observer had not been trained to use. That decision is why the Sahara's best official figure now comes from Algeria rather than Libya, and why the older Death Valley reading has faced closer scrutiny since.
Sinking Air: Why the Sahara, Arabia and the Thar Belong Here
Three of the deserts in the table lie in one belt. The Sahara sits in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a band of semi-permanent high pressure where air from the upper atmosphere sinks, warms as it is compressed and dries out. Sinking air blocks clouds from forming, so sunlight reaches the ground almost unfiltered all summer. That is why Ouargla in the Algerian Sahara sees July temperatures around 43 °C and reached 51.3 °C in 2018, and why Bilma in Niger, deep in the Ténéré, gets only about 12.7 mm of rain a year.
The same belt of high pressure runs east across the Arabian Peninsula to the Thar Desert, which straddles India and Pakistan. Kuwait owes second place to it. Mitribah is a weather station in north-west Kuwait, and elsewhere in the same desert the United Arab Emirates recorded 52.1 °C at Sweihan, a farming town in Abu Dhabi's Al Ain region, in July 2002. India's entry comes from the same belt: Phalodi, a salt town in the buffer zone of the Thar in Rajasthan, reached 51.0 °C in May 2016, India's highest verified temperature. In the Sahara the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia add a rain shadow on top, stripping moisture from Atlantic weather before it reaches the interior.
Below Sea Level: Death Valley, Turpan and Dallol
Death Valley, Turpan and Dallol have something else in common: their stations sit in basins below sea level. Furnace Creek lies in Death Valley, whose floor at Badwater Basin is 86 m below sea level. Air sinking into a hole that deep is compressed and warmed further. The valley is a narrow graben running north to south between the Panamint Range and the Amargosa Range, and winds forced over the ranges to the west descend as dry, warm foehn winds. Death Valley also lies in the rain shadow of four mountain ranges, including the Sierra Nevada, so Pacific storms lose their moisture on the western slopes before they arrive.
China's Turpan Depression works the same way. This fault-bounded trough in the eastern Tian Shan bottoms out at Aydingkol, 154 m below sea level. The Sanbu station's 52.2 °C in July 2023 beat the previous Chinese record of 50.3 °C, set in July 2015 at a station near Aydingkol in the same basin. In Ethiopia, Dallol lies about 130 m below sea level in the Danakil, part of the Afar rift. Its peak of 48.9 °C is lower than the others, but no inhabited place has recorded a higher yearly average: 34.6 °C between 1960 and 1966, with an average daily high of 46.7 °C in the hottest month. The surrounding Danakil Desert covers about 137,000 km² of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti and receives less than 25 mm of rain a year. For the story of America's record holder, see our Death Valley National Park guide.
Distance From the Sea: Mexicali, Repetek, Uchquduq and Oodnadatta
Water heats and cools slowly, so places far from it swing to the greatest extremes. Mexicali sits in the Colorado Desert, a section of the larger Sonoran Desert, north of the head of the Gulf of California; it receives about 71 mm of rain a year and reached 52.0 °C on 28 July 1995.
Turkmenistan's entry is Repetek, a desert reserve founded in 1928 in the eastern Karakum, about 70 km south of Türkmenabat. The Karakum covers roughly 350,000 km², about 70% of Turkmenistan, and receives only 70 to 150 mm of rain a year. On 28 July 1983 Repetek recorded 50.1 °C, the highest temperature ever measured in the former Soviet Union, and higher than any record for Europe or South America. The reserve also shows how cold a continental desert gets: the Karakum is classed as a cold-winter desert, and Türkmenabat nearby has recorded −25.4 °C in January, a span of more than 75 degrees in one region.
Across the Amu Darya lies the Kyzylkum, about 298,000 km² divided among Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, in ninth place. Uchquduq, a uranium-mining town founded in the desert in 1958, reached 49.7 °C on 18 July 2026, equalling Uzbekistan's national record, first set in July 1983.
Australia's record is the hottest in the Southern Hemisphere. Oodnadatta, in South Australia's outback, reached 50.7 °C on 2 January 1960, a figure equalled on 13 January 2022 at Onslow in Western Australia. Oodnadatta's January days average 38 °C, yet its winter record low is −4 °C, a range typical of an inland site far from the moderating sea.
Dasht-e Lut: the Hottest Ground on Earth, With No Thermometer
The Lut Desert in Iran's Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan provinces is missing from the table because it has no official weather-station record to rank. Covering about 51,800 km², it was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site on 17 July 2016. Between 2003 and 2009 the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite measured land surface temperatures across the planet, and the highest of all, 70.7 °C in 2005, was in the Lut. The Lut also had the highest annual maximum in five of the seven years studied: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009.
Ground heats far more than air: surface readings can exceed air temperature by 30 to 50 °C. The Lut's surface is ideal for it. According to one study, more than half the desert's surface is volcanic rock, while its centre has been carved by wind into parallel ridges, the kaluts, up to 75 m high. A later study using newer MODIS data reported 80.8 °C in 2019. The air above the ground during the 2005 reading could have been anywhere from 30 to 54 °C, which is why the WMO does not mix the two kinds of measurement.
Why the Atacama and the Namib Stay Off the List
Dryness alone does not make a desert hot. The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest non-polar desert on Earth, averaging about 15 mm of rain a year; some of its stations have never recorded rain, and it may have had no significant rainfall at all between 1570 and 1971. Yet it is nowhere near this list. The cold Humboldt Current cools the air along the coast, and the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range block moisture from both sides. In the Namib, the cold Benguela Current does the same, holding coastal temperatures to roughly 9 to 20 °C despite less than 10 mm of rain a year in places.
The top ten share the opposite conditions in some combination: sinking air, basins sunk below their surroundings, and distance from cold ocean water. For the national records behind each figure, see our list of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth, and for the deserts at the other end of the thermometer, read our ranking of the coldest deserts in the world.