How cold is the coldest place on Earth?
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Elizabeth Barber Staff Writer
Scientists have apparently聽spotted Dante鈥檚 Inferno, or at least its ice-lacquered ninth circle, found in a pocket in an Antarctic ice sheet.
A team of researchers has presented the coldest ever recorded temperature on Earth: minus 136 degrees Fahrenheit (or, minus 93.2 Celsius).
That鈥檚 more than than the average winter temperature on the Antarctic continent and some than the coldest temperature ever measured in the US (near Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1954). It鈥檚 so cold that the research team says it would be painful to attempt to breathe there 鈥� not that they鈥檙e planning to visit.
鈥淭hank God, ," Ted Scambos, at The National Snow and Ice Data Centre, told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco, California, where the findings were presented on Dec. 9.
The record low temperature was measured via satellite on Aug. 10, 2010, in a pocket in an ice ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau. Other temperatures recorded in that pocket and in other pockets were all within a couple degrees of that superlative.
In these pockets, long enough for its heat to be siphoned off and its temperature to plummet, the scientists propose.
The previous record for world鈥檚 lowest temperature was somewhat balmier: (minus 89.2 Celsius).
The measurements are based on 10 months of data from the Landsat 8 satellite and from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. That means that it will not be recorded with the World Meteorological Organization, which logs superlative temperatures measured by ground-level thermostats, not by remote-sensing satellites.
In the World Meteorological Organization鈥檚 records, the world鈥檚 is minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 degrees Celsius). It was measured, of course, in Antarctica, at the Vostok Station in 1983, during the southern hemisphere鈥檚 winter. The previous record temperature was at Vostok in 1968 and was 1.6 degrees warmer than the new record.
It鈥檚 likely impossible to measure the temperature in Antarctica鈥檚 ice pockets from the ground level, as it鈥檚 there聽for either a mercury or alcohol thermometer to work, Scambos said. But, were scientists able to get readings from the pockets in accordance with World Meteorological Organization鈥檚 standards, these places would freeze Vostok out of the record books, he said.
"I'm confident the pockets are the ," he said.
