AbstractA strong anomaly of the single Langmuir probe characteristics has been observed in detached recombining plasmas, where the conventional analysis of the probe characteristics gives us a considerably high electron temperature compared with the value determined with the spectroscopic methods. We discuss the reason why such characteristics are obtained in terms of the temperature gradient along the magnetic field associated with the parallel electron transport. Moreover, the validity of the probe measurements in the detached recombining plasmas by using multiple electrodes is also discussed.