\n<\/p>\n
Jordan and Israel have suffered through their hottest nights on record, with nocturnal temperatures in the Levant well above levels that scientists consider \u201chellish\u201d.<\/p>\n
Temperatures on Monday night did not go below 35C (95F) in Ghor es-Safi and Aqaba in Jordan, while in the capital, Amman, they stayed above 31.8C.<\/p>\n
In Israel, meteorologists reported a record-breaking nighttime minimum on Tuesday night of 36C in Sedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re walking in a sauna,\u201d said Fayha al-Shibli, a climate scientist at the University of Jordan, who lives in Amman.<\/p>\n
Doctors fret about hot nights because they compound the damage done by heatwaves, preventing worn-out bodies from resting after the stress of a scorching day and contributing to a vast but overlooked death toll.<\/p>\n
In many European countries, tropical nights refer to temperature minimums above 20C, while in Spain, which is more familiar with extreme heat, meteorologists describe nights above 25C as equatorial or torrid.<\/p>\n
In recent years, they have begun to informally refer to those above 30C as \u201chellish\u201d. Overnight temperatures in parts of Jordan and Israel this week remained a full 5C hotter.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Temperature records have been set in the Jordan Valley.<\/span> Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Shibli said 2025 had already broken records for nighttime heat intensity in many parts of the country, though not for length or the number of events.<\/p>\n The climate scientist added that she and her children were suffering, but that she \u201cthanked God\u201d for technology such as air conditioning, which she has in her home, office and car.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people that can\u2019t handle it are the people without air conditioning, and those who work on the street, like cleaners and builders,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Daytime temperatures also reached deadly peaks, with highs of close to 50C in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Israel Meteorological Service said the highest temperature recorded on Wednesday was 49.7C in Gilgal kibbutz, a settlement in the occupied West Bank, setting a historical record in the Jordan Valley.<\/p>\n Aqaba, a port on the Red Sea, broke Jordan\u2019s national heat record with a daytime maximum of 49.6C.<\/p>\n Temperatures in Gaza were cooler but still soared above 40C. Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinians, said on Thursday the heat was \u201cmaking an already desperate situation far worse\u201d by increasing dehydration. It added that limited electricity and fuel \u2013 amid bombardments and forced displacement \u2013 meant there was no relief from the heat.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Health ministries across the Middle East issued warnings to stay in the shade and drink water.<\/p>\n \u201cExtreme temperatures \u2013 well above 40C during the day and above 30C by night \u2013 aren\u2019t unknown in the region, but this is certainly unusual,\u201d said Nick Lee, an assistant forecast manager at MetDesk.<\/p>\n He added that some of the locations experiencing extreme heat were at low altitudes \u2013 such as Ghor es-Safi on the shores of the Dead Sea, which is 350m below mean sea level \u2013 and that this contributed to the high values recorded.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same way that temperature typically decreases as you go higher, when you get to these extreme low altitudes you can see much higher temperatures than at sea level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Heatwaves have grown hotter, longer and more common as fossil fuel pollution has trapped sunlight and baked the planet.<\/p>\n Shibli said heatwaves can be more dangerous if they are much hotter than what people have recently experienced.<\/p>\n \u201c[People] can adapt to gradual changes, but can be caught off-guard by a sudden jump.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jordan and Israel have suffered through their hottest nights on record, with nocturnal temperatures in the Levant well above levels that scientists consider \u201chellish\u201d. Temperatures on Monday night did not go below 35C (95F) in Ghor es-Safi and Aqaba in Jordan, while in the capital, Amman, they stayed above 31.8C. In Israel, meteorologists reported a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[3130,1620,898,813,9597,4570,897,8684,242,1099],"class_list":{"0":"post-16204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-brings","10":"tag-east","11":"tag-heatwave","12":"tag-hellish","13":"tag-hottest","14":"tag-middle","15":"tag-nights","16":"tag-north","17":"tag-record"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}