Dallol, Ethiopia

Dallol, in Ethiopia's Danakil Depression, recorded an average annual temperature of about 34.6 °C in the 1960s. Its salt flats and acid pools look like another planet.

Based on a few years of 1960s records.

Context

Dallol sits in the Danakil Depression of northern Ethiopia, part of the Afar region, at an elevation about 120 metres below sea level. The depression lies where three tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart, so volcanic heat and underground brines reach the surface. The result is salt flats, bubbling pools and colourful mineral deposits in yellow, green and orange.

The temperature figure of about 34.6 degrees Celsius is a long-term average, not the highest temperature ever recorded. It comes from a weather station that operated for only a few years in the 1960s, so the number rests on a short record. It is cited because few inhabited places have such a high annual mean. Daily highs in summer can be much hotter.

Salt miners from the Afar people still cut slabs from the flats and carry them out by camel caravan. Conditions are tough, and the area is remote and sometimes unsafe to reach.

Scientists are interested in Dallol because its hot, acidic and salty pools resemble conditions that may have existed on early Earth or other planets, though researchers have debated how much life can survive there.