Pole of Cold

The Poles of Cold are the places in the southern and northern hemispheres where the lowest air temperatures have been recorded.

Vostok station is located at the elevation of 3,488 m (11,444 ft) above sea level, far removed from the moderating influence of oceans (more than 1,000 km [620 mi] from the nearest sea coast), and high latitude that results in almost three months of civil polar night every year (early May to end of July), all combine to produce an environment where temperatures rarely rise above −25 °C (−13 °F) during summer and frequently fall below −70 °C (−94 °F) in winter.

It is generally thought that Vostok is not the coldest place in Antarctica, and there are locations (notably, Dome A) that are modestly colder on average.

The now inactive Plateau Station, located on the central Antarctic plateau, recorded an average yearly temperature that was consistently lower than that of Vostok Station during the 37-month period that it was active in the late 1960s, with its average for the coldest month being several degrees lower than the same statistic for Vostok.

However the World Meteorological Organization has recognized in 2020 a temperature of −69.6 °C (−93.3 °F), measured near the topographic summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet on 22 December 1991, as the lowest in the Northern Hemisphere.

[3] In December 1868 and then in February 1869 Ivan Khudyakov made the discovery of the Northern Pole of Cold by measuring a record temperature of −63.2 °C (−81.8 °F) in Verkhoyansk.