Coldest Temperature on Earth a Bone-Chilling -136 F

It might be no surprise that the coldest temperature on Earth was measured in Antarctica, but the latest and most-detailed global surface temperature maps reveal a spot on the South Pole that registered at minus 136 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 93.2 Celsius).

The measurement was recorded Aug. 10, 2010 and handily bested the previous coldest-ever Earth temperature of minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), which was recorded at the Russian Vostock base in 1983.

While the new record-setting temperature was recorded by a satellite measurement of surface ice temperature and the prior record was physically recorded air temperature, it is almost certain that if there was an air temperature record available, it too would be colder than the Vostock measurement, according to Jonathan Amos of the BBC.

News of the coldest temperature on Earth was reported at the 46th Annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco, which is going on throughout this week.

Ted Scambos from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., presented the findings.

"These very low temperatures are hard to imagine," Scambos told the BBC.

"The way I like to put it is that it's almost as cold below freezing as boiling water is above freezing. The new low is a good 50 degrees [Celsius] colder than temperatures in Alaska or Siberia, and about 30 degrees [Celsius] colder than the summit of Greenland."

The mind-numbing temperature was measured in ice pockets scattered around a high ice ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the East Antarctic Plateau.

The theory as to how the air becomes so cold is that at the peak of the Antarctic winter, clear skies above these domes cause the air to get colder as it radiates away toward space. But as the air near Earth's surface gets colder, it also gets denser, which makes it sink. The heavy cold air moves down the dome, eventually getting stuck in a pocket of ice, where it can remain for several days. The air keeps radiating away heat, becoming colder and colder.

"By causing the air to be stationary for extended periods, while continuing to radiate more heat away into space, you get the absolute lowest temperatures we're able to find," Scambos said in a statement. "We suspected that we would be looking for one magical site that got extremely cold, but what we found was a large strip of Antarctica at high altitude that regularly reached these record low temperatures."

But, for as cold as it was, the temperature will not make it into the record books. The World Meteorological Organization only recognizes temperatures recorded a few meters above ground, which means that, officially, the Vostock temperature will retain its record, LiveScience reported.

But Scambos was unfazed.

"I'm confident the pockets are the coldest places on Earth," Scambos said. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't pretty sure we were colder than Vostok."