Өлім сарқылымының аңғары

Valley in the Mojave Desert, Eastern California
the valley

Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is thought to be the hottest place on Earth during summer. Death Valley is home to the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, who have inhabited the valley for at least the past millennium. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of lowest elevation in North America, at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. On the afternoon of July10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, which stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. This reading, however, and several others taken in that period are disputed by some modern experts. Lying mostly in Inyo County, California, near the border of California and Nevada, in the Great Basin, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Death Valley constitutes much of Death Valley National Park and is the principal feature of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve. It runs from north to south between the Amargosa Range on the east and the Panamint Range on the west. The Grapevine Mountains and the Owlshead Mountains form its northern and southern boundaries, respectively. It has an area of about 3,000 square miles (7,770 km2). The highest point in Death Valley National Park is Telescope Peak, in the Panamint Range, which has an elevation of 11043 feet (3366 m).

Death Valley is a graben—a downdropped block of land between two mountain ranges. It lies at the southern end of a geological trough, Walker Lane, which runs north to Oregon. The valley is bisected by a right lateral strike slip fault system, comprising the Death Valley Fault and the Furnace Creek Fault. The eastern end of the left lateral Garlock Fault intersects the Death Valley Fault. Furnace Creek and the Amargosa River flow through part of the valley and eventually disappear into the sands of the valley floor. Death Valley also contains salt pans. According to current geological consensus, at various times during the middle of the Pleistocene era, which ended roughly 10,000–12,000 years ago, an inland lake, Lake Manly, formed in Death Valley. The lake was nearly 100 mile (161 km) long and 600 feet (183 m) deep. The end basin in a chain of lakes that began with Mono Lake, in the north, and continued through basins down the Owens River Valley, through Searles and China Lakes and the Panamint Valley, to the immediate west. As the area turned to desert, the water evaporated, leaving an abundance of evaporitic salts, such as common sodium salts and borax, which were later exploited during the modern history of the region, primarily 1883 to 1907.

Death Valley has a subtropical, hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh), with long, extremely hot summers; short, warm winters; and little rainfall. The valley is extremely dry because it lies in the rain shadow of four major mountain ranges (including the Sierra Nevada and Panamint Range). Moisture moving inland from the Pacific Ocean must pass eastward over the mountains to reach Death Valley; as air masses are forced upward by each range, they cool and moisture condenses, to fall as rain or snow on the western slopes. When the air masses reach Death Valley, most of the moisture in the air has already been lost and thus there is little left to fall as precipitation. The extreme heat of Death Valley is attributable to a confluence of geographic and topographic factors. Scientists have identified a number of key contributors: in Death Valley this air is subject to continual reheating as it is trapped by high, steep valley walls and recycled back to the valley floor. Warm air also is trapped by the valley's north–south orientation, which runs perpendicular to prevailing west to east winds. Migration of warm air from other areas (advection): Warm desert regions adjacent to Death Valley, especially to the south and east, often heat air before it arrives in Death Valley. Warm mountain winds: As winds are forced up and over mountains (e. g. the numerous ranges west of Death Valley), the winds can be warmed in several ways. The resulting dry, warm winds are known as foehn winds. Their warmth can in part be caused by the release of latent heat, which occurs when water vapor condenses into clouds. The extremely low elevation below sea level compresses the air which heats it further. Severe heat and dryness contribute to perpetual drought like conditions in Death Valley and prevent much cloud formation from passing through the confines of the valley, where precipitation is often in the form of a virga. The depth and shape of Death Valley strongly influence its climate. The valley is a long, narrow basin that descends below sea level and is walled by high, steep mountain ranges. The clear, dry air and sparse plant cover allow sunlight to heat the desert surface. Summer nights provide little relief: overnight lows may dip just into the range. Moving masses of super heated air blow through the valley, creating extremely high ambient temperatures. The hottest air temperature ever recorded in Death Valley was , on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek), On June 30, 2013, a verified temperature of was recorded and is tied with Mitribah, Kuwait, for the hottest reliably measured air temperature ever recorded on Earth. A temperature of was recorded at the Furnace Creek weather station on August 16, 2020, but has not yet been officially verified. The valley again recorded that temperature on July 9, 2021. However, it has not yet been officially verified as well. The valley's lowest temperature, recorded at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) on January 2, 1913, was
The highest surface temperature ever recorded in Death Valley was , on July 15, 1972, at Furnace Creek, which is the highest ground surface temperature ever recorded on earth, as well as the only recorded surface temperature of above
The greatest number of consecutive days with a maximum temperature of at least was 154, in the summer of 2001. The summer of 1996 had 40 days over , and 105 days over The summer of 1917 had 52 days when the temperature reached or above, 43 of them consecutive. The highest overnight or low temperature recorded in Death Valley is , recorded on July 5, 1918. However this value is disputed; a record high low of on July 12, 2012, is considered reliable. This is one of the highest values ever recorded. Also on July 12, 2012, the mean 24 hour temperature recorded at Death Valley was , which makes it the world's warmest 24 hour temperature on record. Four major mountain ranges lie between Death Valley and the ocean, each one adding to an increasingly drier rain shadow effect, and in 1929, 1953, and 1989, no rain was recorded for the whole year. The wettest month on record is January 1995, when fell on Death Valley. Snow with accumulation has only been recorded in January 1922, while scattered flakes have been recorded on other occasions.

In 2005, Death Valley received four times its average annual rainfall of As it has done before for hundreds of years, the lowest spot in the valley filled with a wide, shallow lake, but the extreme heat and aridity immediately began evaporating the ephemeral lake. The pair of images (seen at right) from NASA's Landsat 5 satellite documents the short history of Death Valley's Lake Badwater: formed in February 2005 (top) and evaporated by February 2007 (bottom). In 2005, a big pool of greenish water stretched most of the way across the valley floor. By May 2005, the valley floor had resumed its more familiar role as Badwater Basin, salt coated salt flats. In time, this freshly dissolved and recrystallized salt will darken. The western margin of Death Valley is traced by alluvial fans. During flash floods, rainfall from the steep mountains to the west pours through narrow canyons, picking up everything from fine clay to large rocks. When these torrents reach the mouths of the canyons, they widen and slow, branching out into distributary channels. The paler the fans, the younger they are.

In spite of the overwhelming heat and sparse rainfall, Death Valley exhibits considerable biodiversity. Flowers, watered by snowmelt, carpet the desert floor each spring, continuing into June. These isolated pupfish populations are remnants of the wetter Pleistocene climate. Efflorescence, also known as salt flowers, is a rare occurrence in Death Valley that occurs when rain soaks into the soil and dissolves salt beneath the surface causing the ground to appear as if there is a light dusting of snow.

Death Valley is home to the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, who have inhabited the valley for at least the past millennium. The Timbisha name for the valley, tümpisa, means "rock paint" and refers to the red ocher paint that can be made from a type of clay found in the valley. Some families still live in the valley at Furnace Creek. Another village was in Grapevine Canyon near the present site of Scotty's Castle. It was called maahunu in the Timbisha language, whose meaning is uncertain, although it is known that hunu means 'canyon'. The valley received its English name in 1849 during the California Gold Rush. It was called Death Valley by prospectors and others who sought to cross the valley on their way to the gold fields, after 13 pioneers perished from one early expedition of wagon trains. During the 1850s, gold and silver were extracted in the valley. In the 1880s, borax was discovered and extracted by mule drawn wagons. Death Valley National Monument was proclaimed on February 11, 1933, by President Herbert Hoover, placing the area under federal protection. In 1994, the monument was redesignated as Death Valley National Park, as well as being substantially expanded to include Saline and Eureka Valleys.