On the surface, North Texas is hotter to the touch

When discussing hot weather, Stuart Gaffin would rather not go beyond the surface.

That’s where things really heat up, said Gaffin, a research scientist at the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.

“I’ve seen surface temperatures on asphalt rooftops in New York at 190 degrees,” Gaffin said.

Conventional temperatures are measured in the air, but “the surface temperature is what you feel if you put your hand on the concrete,” he said.

And if it’s hot outside and the surface is dark — like a car hood or artificial turf — and is hit by direct sunlight, the results can be searing.

“It’s reality. It’s the sun hitting the surface of the Earth,” Gaffin said in a telephone interview.

To prove Gaffin’s point, we put a thermometer on the roof of the Oil & Gas/Star-Telegram Building in downtown Fort Worth on Friday afternoon and got a reading of about 140 degrees.

The official reading at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, where the thermometer sits roughly 2 meters above the ground, was 103.

While his expertise is on the surface, Gaffin acknowledged watching “air temperatures” in Baghdad, where it’s been 120-plus degrees in recent days.

“Astonishing,” Gaffin said.

That said, here are a few other “air temperatures” worth noting:

134 highest on record in the world, at Death Valley, Calif., on July 10, 1913. A 136-degree reading at El Azizia, Libya, on Sept. 13, 1922, was disqualified by the World Meteorological Organization in 2012.

120 highest on record in Texas, at Seymour on Aug. 12, 1936.

119 highest on record in North Texas, at Weatherford on June 26, 1980.

113 highest on record at DFW Airport, on June 26 and 27, 1980.

-128.6 lowest on record in the world, at Vostok Station, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

16 degrees at DFW Airport seven months ago, on Jan. 8, which doesn’t seem so bad now.

This story was originally published August 7, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "On the surface, North Texas is hotter to the touch."