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Concept
Lowest temperature recorded on Earth
Summary
The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is at the then-Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983 by ground measurements.
On 10 August 2010, satellite observations showed a surface temperature of at , along a ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, at elevation. The result was reported at the 46th annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2013; it is a provisional figure, and may be subject to revision. The value is not listed as the record lowest temperature as it was measured by remote sensing from satellite and not by ground-based thermometers, unlike the 1983 record. The temperature announced reflects that of the ice surface, while the Vostok readings measured the air above the ice, and so the two are not directly comparable. More recent work shows many locations in the high Antarctic where surface temperatures drop to approximately . Due to the very strong temperature gradient near the surface, these imply near-surface air temperature minima of approximately .
On 21 January 1838, a Russian merchant named Neverov recorded a temperature of in Yakutsk. On 15 January 1885, H. Wild reported that a temperature of was measured in Verkhoyansk. A later measurement at the same place in February 1892 was reported as . Soviet researchers later announced a recording of in February 1933 at Oymyakon, about to the south-east of Verkhoyansk; this measurement was reported by Soviet texts through the 1940s as a record low, with the previous measurement from Verkhoyansk retroactively adjusted to .
The next reliable measurement was made during the 1957 season at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, yielding on 11 May and on 17 September. The next world record low temperature was a reading of , measured at the Soviet Vostok Station in 1968, on the Antarctic Plateau. Vostok again broke its own record with a reading of on 21 July 1983. This remains the record for a directly recorded temperature.
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