UAE temperature crosses 49°C: Is this the hottest day so far this summer?

Walking under the sun at noon is no longer a convenient option these days — even if your stop is just a few blocks away — with the summer heat hitting the highs of 40 degrees Celsius. On Saturday, UAE temperatures neared the 50-degree mark.

The UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) on Saturday recorded 49.3 degrees Celsius at 3.15pm in the Hamim area of Al Dhafra region in Abu Dhabi. It was the highest temperature recorded in the country so far this year.

A sweltering 49.2 degrees Celsius was also recorded at Mezaira, also in Abu Dhabi, at 4pm, according to the NCM’s readings. In Dubai, the hottest temperature on the same day was 47.6 degrees Celsius at Margham.

While 49.3 degrees Celsius is indeed hot — this wasn’t the highest ever recorded during the summer season in the country. Sometime in 2021, temperatures crossed 51 degrees Celsius twice in three days.

Experts have earlier said summers could get even hotter over the next years as the earth hit its highest recorded global average temperature on July 3.

“In the UAE, the average temperature is forecasted to increase by 2.21C to 2.38C by 2050 and by 3.64 to 3.91C by 2100,” according to Dr Sreejith Balasubramanian, associate professor, Middlesex University Dubai. He was citing data from the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment.

This increase, however, is not totally unexpected, given that the 10 warmest years on record have all fallen within the period post-2010. “The UAE has also witnessed a sharper increase in temperature since 1990 with more intensity in warming during the summer months,” he told Khaleej Times in a recent report.

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