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The Hottest, Coldest, Driest, and Wettest Places on Earth

Tap a record to see where each extreme was recorded.

Hottest Place

56.7°C, recorded July 10, 1913 — the highest officially recognized temperature in Earth's history. The area is still famous today for brutal summer heat that regularly tops 50°C.

Coldest Place

-89.2°C, recorded July 21, 1983 — the lowest temperature ever recorded at ground level; satellite observations have detected even lower temperatures elsewhere.

Driest Place

About 0.5 mm of average annual rainfall — so extremely dry that some weather stations there have gone decades with almost no measurable rain, making it a useful stand-in for Mars-like conditions in space research.

Wettest Place

Over 11,000 mm of average annual rainfall — located in a monsoon region of northeastern India, it's considered the rainiest place on Earth, receiving staggering amounts of rain nearly year-round.

How Do People Live in Such Extreme Environments?

Even in the harshest climate zones, towns with permanent residents often exist. People in these places have developed distinctive ways of life, refined over generations, specifically adapted to their extreme environment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will these records still hold in the future?

As climate change drives more extreme weather events, there's growing concern that some of these records could eventually be broken.

Didn't Libya used to hold the record for hottest temperature?

Libya's El Azizia once held the official record at 57.8°C, but a 2012 re-investigation by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found it to be a measurement error and invalidated it — Death Valley's record is now recognized as the official highest.