What Is the Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded on Earth?

The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth is −89.2°C (−128.6°F), measured at Vostok Station in East Antarctica on July 21, 1983. Here is the twist: satellites have since found spots nearly ten degrees colder, yet the official record has not moved. The reason comes down to what counts as a temperature reading.

• The official world record is −89.2°C (−128.6°F), logged at Vostok Station in East Antarctica on July 21, 1983, and it still stands in the WMO's archive of weather extremes.
• Satellites found snow surfaces as cold as −93.2°C (−136°F) on the East Antarctic Plateau in 2010, and a 2018 study refined that to about −98°C (−144°F) across roughly 100 shallow hollows, per NASA and the research paper.
• The WMO only recognizes ground-based readings of air temperature, so satellite measurements of the snow surface do not qualify, a distinction the lead researcher confirmed.
• The coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere, −69.6°C (−93.3°F), was recorded at an automatic weather station in Greenland on December 22, 1991, and was only officially recognized in 2020, per the WMO announcement.
• The WMO's Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes was created in 2007, and each candidate record is checked against the instrument used, the observation method, and the weather pattern on the day, as the Wisconsin team explains.

What is the coldest temperature ever recorded?

The short answer is −89.2°C (−128.6°F), a July reading from Vostok Station in East Antarctica. July is mid-winter in the Southern Hemisphere, when the sun stays below the horizon for months, and Vostok's inland position keeps it far from any ocean warmth. The reading dates to July 21, 1983, and no thermometer anywhere has officially gone lower since. Records like this are not decided by popular vote. The referee is the World Meteorological Organization, which keeps the official list through its Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes. That archive exists precisely because extreme claims need a common standard: a calibrated instrument, a documented method, and a traceable chain of evidence. Without that discipline, any sheltered valley sensor or faulty gauge could claim a world record. The full account of the night Vostok hit −89.2°C shows how much weather had to line up for that one reading, on the continent that is also the coldest desert on Earth.

Why don't the colder satellite readings count?

Because they measure something different from what a thermometer measures. Satellites orbiting hundreds of kilometers overhead sense the temperature of the snow's skin, while Vostok's record was the temperature of the air about two meters above the ice. In deep Antarctic winter, the two can diverge sharply: an extreme inversion layer means the surface can be far colder than the air just above it. The story of these colder readings began in December 2013, when glaciologist Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center presented findings from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, NOAA weather satellites, and the new Landsat 8. The team had analyzed 32 years of satellite data and found dozens of cold pockets along a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) swath of a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji. The coldest reading reached −93.2°C (−136°F) on August 10, 2010. Scambos himself explained why the number would not enter the record books: "It won't be in the Guinness Book of World Records — or recognized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the official keepers of world weather records — because the readings were measured by satellites, not from thermometers." He spoke to the Associated Press at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December 2013. The 2018 follow-up paper by Scambos and colleagues went further. Analyzing Antarctic winters from 2004 to 2016, the team identified about 100 sites in small topographic basins, less than 200 square kilometers each and roughly 2 meters deep, sitting above 3,800 meters (12,500 feet). Minimum surface temperatures reached about −98°C (−144°F). Comparing those with air temperatures at nearby weather stations, the authors estimated the air two meters above the coldest snow at roughly −94°C (−137°F), give or take 4 degrees, still an estimate rather than a direct reading. Under clear winter skies, the snow radiates its heat into space. Cold, dense air forms just above the surface and slides downhill into shallow hollows, where it pools and keeps cooling if the air stays still. A pressure pattern that pushes against this downhill drift lets the trapped air linger and chill even further under extremely dry skies. Scambos noted the pattern felt familiar: "Any gardener knows that clear skies and dry air in spring or winter lead to the coldest temperatures at night. The thing is, here in the United States and most of Canada, we don't get a night that lasts three or four or six months long for things to really chill down under extended clear sky conditions."

How does a reading become an official world record?

The Greenland story shows the process at work. On December 22, 1991, an automatic weather station named Klinck, perched at 3,105 meters (10,170 feet) near the summit of the Greenland ice sheet, recorded −69.6°C (−93.3°F). The station belonged to a University of Wisconsin–Madison network built for the Greenland Ice Sheet Project and ran only about two years in the early 1990s before the equipment returned to the lab. In 2020, a WMO international panel tracked down the original project team, analyzed the equipment, the observation practices, and the weather pattern of December 1991, and unanimously recommended accepting the observation. The new value replaced the old Northern Hemisphere record of −67.8°C (−90°F), held by the Russian towns of Verkhoyansk (February 1892) and Oymyakon (January 1933).

George Weidner, the Wisconsin researcher who led the verification paper, called it "an important moment for the AWS systems in that their data are being accepted as official records." WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas added that the newly recognized record was "an important reminder about the stark contrasts that exist on this planet." The same standard applies everywhere: calibrate the instrument, document the method, and check the day's weather before a number joins the archive.

What do most people get wrong about this record?

The most common mistake is mixing up the snow surface with the air. When headlines say satellites found −98°C, readers hear that the record fell. It did not: the −98°C figure describes the snow's skin, while the −89.2°C record describes the air a person would breathe two meters up. They are two different quantities, measured two different ways. The second mistake is assuming somewhere inhabited came close. It has not: the coldest towns on Earth, Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon in northeastern Siberia, bottomed out at −67.8°C (−90°F), more than twenty degrees warmer than Vostok's mark; Alaska's −62°C (−79.6°F) is even further off. The third mistake is reading the record's age as a weakness: −89.2°C has stood since 1983 not because instruments were crude but because that night was extraordinary. And the book still moves: the WMO verified Greenland's −69.6°C in 2020, nearly three decades after the fact.

Reading	Where	When	How it was measured	Official record?
−89.2°C (−128.6°F)	Vostok Station, East Antarctica	July 21, 1983	Thermometer, air 2 m above ice	Yes, world
−93.2°C (−136°F)	East Antarctic Plateau hollows	August 10, 2010	Satellite thermal infrared	No, surface temperature
~−98°C (−144°F)	~100 plateau hollows	Winters 2004–2016	Satellite thermal infrared	No, surface temperature
−69.6°C (−93.3°F)	Klinck, Greenland	December 22, 1991	Automatic weather station	Yes, Northern Hemisphere
−67.8°C (−90°F)	Verkhoyansk, Siberia	February 1892	Thermometer	Coldest permanently inhabited place

Could Vostok's record ever fall?

Possibly. No weather station sits inside the ultra-cold hollows where the satellites saw −98°C surfaces; most automated stations nearby cannot keep working through the dead of winter, and any instrument left there would need electronics that survive such cold. Until one does, the coldest spots on the plateau have no thermometer to speak for them. Scambos suspects "a physical limit to how cold it can get in this high plateau area and how much heat can escape," set by the gases in the thin air above the ice. The 2018 study found that ultra-cold occurrences line up with strong polar-vortex circulation, the vast spinning dome of cold air over Antarctica that the jet stream's behavior helps shape. If clear, dry, calm conditions persisted long enough over the right hollow, the floor might be tested. For now, the answer remains −89.2°C, measured by a thermometer at Vostok on a winter night in 1983. The satellites have shown where colder places are; a thermometer still has to visit one before the record moves. How we made this article: FactSpire researched and drafted it with AI assistance and checked every fact against the sources listed above.