Temperature of -93.2C (-136F) [New Record!] Recorded in Antarctica by NASA-USGS Landsat 8 Satellite

[Sainsbo]

"Researchers analyzed 32 years' worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 136 F (minus 93.2 C) was set Aug. 10, 2010."

 

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-usgs-landsat-8-satellite-pinpoints-coldest-spots-on-earth/#.UqZPdOJFtPm

 

It's quite astonishing to see that the old record appers to have been beaten by 4C! It makesy ou wonder how many times it may have dropped even colder, and has not been recorded. It seems that temperatures dropped to -93C just back in July of this year. I wonder if -100C has been broken in the not so distant past?

 

Video can be found here.

 

Edited December 9, 2013 by Sainsbo

[March Blizzard]

It really is in a league of its own when it comes to cold, is Antarctica.

Great to see the record "go", even if it wasn't measured via "traditional" means.

[feb1991blizzard]

I think -93c is what is positively known (or negatively actually!) known by snow and cold lovers as a stonker!

[mike Meehan]

Cold enough to make dry ice i.e. frozen CO2

[Coast]

Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the new record is "50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota." "It's more like you'd see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles," Scambos said, from the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco Monday, where he announced the data. "I'm confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth."

 

However, 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, Scambos said. "Vostok is still the world's coldest recorded location," said Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University professor of geography and also the rapporteur for climate extremes at the WMO. "They are using remote sensing, not standard weather stations, so we at the World Meteorological Organization will not recognize that."

 

Regardless of whether or not it's an official record, it's still unimaginably cold: "Thank God, I don't know how exactly it feels," Scambos added. But he said scientists do routinely make naked 100 degree below zero dashes outside in the South Pole, so people can survive that temperature for about three minutes. Most of the time researchers need to breathe through a snorkel that brings air into the coat through a sleeve and warms it up "so you don't inhale by accident" the cold air, Scambos said.

 

On Monday, the coldest U.S. temperature was a relatively balmy 27 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Yellowstone, Wyo., said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private firm Weather Underground. As for the USA's coldest mark on record, it's -80 degrees F, set in Alaska in 1971. "If you want soul-crushing cold, you really have to go overseas," Scambos said in a phone interview. "It's just a whole other level of cold because on that cold plateau, conditions are perfect." Scambos said the air is dry, the ground chilly, the skies cloudless and cold air swoops down off a dome and gets trapped in a chilly lower spot "hugging the surface and sliding around."

 

Just because one spot on Earth has set records for cold that has little to do with global warming because it is one spot in one place, said Waleed Abdalati, an ice scientist at the University of Colorado and NASA's former chief scientist. Both Abdalati, who wasn't part of the measurement team, and Scambos said this is likely an unusual random reading in a place that hasn't been measured much before and could have been colder or hotter in the past and we wouldn't know.

 

"It does speak to the range of conditions on this Earth, some of which we haven't been able to observe," Abdalati said

 

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/12/10/antarctica-cold-record/3950019/

[Su Campu]

It is a bone-chilling temperature alright, but let's not get carried away. This was at 14,000 ft, so our comparison of this temperature to the coldest recorded in say Siberia is a little misleading. If there were a 14,000-ft block of ice in the Arctic in the depths of solar night then we could be seeing similar temperatures there. Even Ojmjakon (2,600 ft) in northeastern Siberia has recorded -71.2 °C, and often gets to -60 °C in mid-winter. Raise that city, which is located in a similar hollow between mountains, a few more thousand feet and subject it to 24 hours of net cooling through a thin and frigid atmosphere and Antarctica won't be so outlandish.