Two different things sit on this page, and they are kept apart. Official records have been examined and accepted by a meteorological authority. The second set is simply the extreme of our own station history, which is a smaller and much younger body of data.
Air temperature, verified and published by the authority named against each.
Accepted by the WMO, though questioned by some historians.
SourceWMO official world record low.
SourceHighest reliably measured in at least 76 years, WMO verified.
SourceMeasured from orbit, these are the temperature of the ground rather than the air. Sunlit desert ground runs far hotter than the air above it, so these are never comparable with the air records above and are never ranked against them.
Ground surface temperature from satellite, not air temperature.
The highest and lowest in the daily records we hold, from NOAA GHCN-Daily. These are not official records: a station’s history may be short, and the network does not cover everywhere. Each one names the day it happened.
Official records: World Meteorological Organization Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes, and NASA. Station history: NOAA GHCN-Daily. How we rank and verify.