Nonetheless, one can study the forces at play in the atmosphere to arrive at a good speculation of the climate. As winds blew across the "Mediterranean Sink", they would heat or cool adiabatically with altitude. In the empty Mediterranean Basin, the summertime temperatures would probably have been extremely high. Using the dry adiabatic lapse rate of around per kilometer, the maximum possible temperature of an area below sea level would be about warmer than it would be at sea level. Under this extreme assumption, maxima would be near at the lowest points of the dry abyssal plain, permitting no permanent life but extremophiles. Further, the altitude below sea level would result in 1.45 to 1.71 atm (1102 to 1300 mmHg) air pressure, further increasing heat stress. Although it was probably quite dry in the Basin, there is no direct way to measure how much drier it would have been. One can imagine that areas not covered by the remaining brine would have been very dry.