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Article snippet: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Residents of Turbat, a remote town in southwestern Pakistan, have had to cope with punishingly hot weather for generations. But when the mercury climbed to 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit on May 28 — potentially the hottest temperature ever recorded in Asia — relief proved elusive, partly because Turbat suffers from regular electricity shortages. Refrigerators stopped working during that May scorcher, as did ice factories. “It got so hot that people here said that there is no difference between Turbat and hell,” Noroz Bin Shabir, a student from the town, said by telephone. “It was like a fire was burning outside.” The temperature in Turbat prompted discussions on social media and among extreme-weather experts about whether an Asian record had really been reached. Had meteorologists in Pakistan rounded up the reading by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit), some observers asked, to an Asian record of 54 degrees Celsius, and would that adjustment prevent history from being made? Randall S. Cerveny, the rapporteur on weather and climate extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, later said it was unclear if any rounding had been done. He added that the 129.2-degree measurement, if confirmed, and an identical one from Kuwait last summer, would be the third-highest ever recorded on the planet behind 134 degrees at Furnace Creek, in Death Valley, Calif., in 1913 and 131 degrees in Kebili, Tunisia, in 1931. The atte... Link to the full article to read more