Nawabshah (Shaheed Benazirabad) may have endured the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth in the month of April, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, quoting a French meteorologist and an expert on weather extremes.

A high of 50.2 degrees Celsius was recorded in Shaheed Benazirabad on April 30, with dozens suffering heat strokes and business activities coming to a halt in the city.

Read: How Sindh is struggling to respond to climate change challenges

Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist at Meteo France, posted on Twitter that the temperature recorded in the city on Apr 30 was the highest ever for Pakistan as well as Asia. But Christopher Burt, a global expert on weather extremes, went a step ahead to claim it may have been the highest ever recorded in the world in the month.

"The competing hottest April temperature of 123.8 degrees (51.0 Celsius) set in Santa Rosa, Mexico, in April 2001, is 'of dubious reliability,'," Burt was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

The newspaper said that the claim could not be confirmed as the World Meteorological Organisation does not keep track of monthly extremes, but Randy Cerveny of the agency said Burt was "pretty thorough about those things."

According to the newspaper, it is not the first time in recent months that Nawabshah has broken a record as just last month it set a monthly record for the highest temperature in Pakistan during a heatwave which saw high temperatures being reported across the country.

"April’s heat wave, coming just 30 days later, resulted from a sprawling heat dome centred over the northern Indian Ocean."

Last year, Pakistan was ranked among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. A heatwave in Karachi in 2015 had left over 1,200 dead in the city, with over 40,000 suffering from heat strokes.

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