The Coldest Places on Earth
On 21 July 1983 the air at Vostok Station, Antarctica, fell to −89.2°C (−128.6°F) — the coldest temperature ever reliably measured on Earth. But the coldest place where anyone lives is a Siberian village at −67.7°C. Those are two different records, and most lists blur them. Here is the ranking, by official record low, with a source on every number.
At −89°C, physics stops being an abstraction. Exposed skin freezes in well under a minute. Breathe in too fast and the cold air can injure your airway before it reaches your lungs. Steel turns brittle; diesel gels; the alcohol in a thermometer can simply run out of scale, which is exactly what happened in the Yukon in 1947. These are not places that are “a bit chilly.” They are the edge of what the atmosphere can do.
The confusion in every “coldest places” list comes from mixing two questions. One is where has the lowest temperature ever been recorded — and the answer is an uninhabited ice-sheet station in Antarctica. The other is where do people actually endure cold like this — and that answer is a pair of Siberian towns. Keep them apart and the ranking below makes sense.
The Coldest Places on Earth, by Official Record Low
Ranked coldest first, by the lowest air temperature ever measured at each site. These are in-situ instrument readings — the kind the record books use — not satellite estimates (more on that below). Every figure carries its source.
The lowest air temperature ever reliably measured anywhere on Earth, and the WMO-recognised world record. Vostok sits at 3,489 m on the high interior ice sheet, near the geomagnetic South Pole — the single worst combination of altitude, latitude and clear-sky radiative cooling on the planet.
An automatic weather station near the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The WMO formally certified this reading as the Northern Hemisphere record in 2020 — it had sat unexamined in the data for nearly 30 years.
One of the two Siberian "Pole of Cold" towns. Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon trade the title of coldest permanently inhabited place; this 1892 reading held the Northern Hemisphere record until the Greenland station displaced it.
The coldest place on Earth where people live year-round. Oymyakon sits in a valley basin that traps draining cold air, and is usually the answer to "the coldest inhabited place."
The coldest temperature ever recorded in North America. The alcohol thermometer bottomed out, so the observer scratched a mark on the glass and shipped it to Toronto to be calibrated against the record.
The all-time record low for the United States (official reading −79.8°F), set at a camp along what became the trans-Alaska pipeline. No US state has come within 16°F of it since.
The US record — Prospect Creek's −80°F — comes straight from our own state-by-state data. See the coldest temperatures ever recorded in all 50 states.
Record Extremes vs. Where People Actually Live
The true record holders are research stations and automatic instruments on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets — Vostok (−89.2°C), Dome Fuji and Dome Argus in Antarctica, and the Klinck station in Greenland (−69.6°C). Nobody winters at the coldest of them. They exist to measure, not to house.
Among places people live year-round, Oymyakon (−67.7°C) and Verkhoyansk (−67.8°C) in Siberia are the record pair. The coldest settlements in North America are Canada's high-Arctic outposts — Alert and Eureka, Nunavut — where winter means months of darkness, not just cold.
This split matters because the two lists barely overlap. Vostok hits temperatures 20°C lower than Oymyakon, yet Oymyakon is the far harder place to survive — because people are born, raised and buried there, with no heated station to retreat into.
Ground vs. Satellite: What Counts as “the Record”
You will see a colder number online: around −93°C (−136°F), and in some articles −98°C (−144°F). Those are real measurements — but they are not the record, and the reason is worth understanding.
In 2013, NASA and USGS scientists analysing 32 years of satellite data found snow-surface temperatures on the East Antarctic Plateau as low as −93.2°C on 10 August 2010; a 2018 reanalysis led by the National Snow and Ice Data Center pushed the figure to about −98°C in shallow hollows in the ice. But the World Meteorological Organization only recognises temperatures measured by a thermometer in the air, about 1.5 m above the ground, to a defined standard. A satellite reads the skin of the snow, which radiates heat away and runs colder than the air a person would breathe. So the official record stays −89.2°C at Vostok, and the satellite figures stand as a separate, fascinating footnote — the same reason the Lut Desert's satellite-measured 80.8°C surface is not the hottest-air record either.
If you want the longer version of how a reading becomes an official record — and why perfectly real numbers get left out — we wrote it up in how weather records are actually verified.
Why These Places Get So Cold
The coldest places share a recipe, and “near the poles” is only part of it. Four ingredients stack up:
- High altitude. Vostok sits at nearly 3,500 m on the Antarctic ice dome. Air thins and cools with height, so the interior plateau starts far colder than the coast.
- Clear, dry, dark skies. In the polar winter the sun never rises. With no sunlight and almost no water vapour to trap heat, the surface radiates its warmth straight out to space night after night. Dry air is the key — humidity is a blanket, and these places have none.
- Cold-air drainage into basins. This is why Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk — neither at great altitude — get so brutally cold. Dense, chilled air slides downhill and pools in their valley bottoms, with nowhere to drain and no wind to mix it out. The towns sit at the bottom of a cold lake made of air.
- Distance from the ocean. Water releases heat slowly and moderates the air above it. The Arctic Ocean keeps the North Pole “mild” compared with interior Siberia and the Antarctic plateau, which are landlocked ice and have no sea to warm them.
How the Coldest US Spots Compare
The United States has genuinely severe cold — it just doesn't reach the Siberian or Antarctic class. Prospect Creek, Alaska's −80°F (−62.2°C) in January 1971 is the national record and sits right alongside Snag, Yukon on the North American list. In the Lower 48, Rogers Pass, Montana holds the record at −70°F (1954), and towns like International Falls, Minnesota — “the Icebox of the Nation” — log −40°F cold most winters. For the full state-by-state picture, see the coldest temperatures ever recorded in every US state and the coldest cities in America. You can also look up the coldest day your own town ever had on our weather-history tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the coldest place on Earth?
By official air temperature, Vostok Station on the East Antarctic Plateau — −89.2°C (−128.6°F) on 21 July 1983, the WMO world record. Satellites have measured colder snow-surface temperatures nearby (around −93°C), but those are not the official record.
What is the coldest inhabited place on Earth?
Oymyakon, Russia, at −67.7°C (−89.9°F) in 1933. Nearby Verkhoyansk recorded an almost identical −67.8°C in 1892, and the two Siberian towns trade the title. Both sit in valley basins that trap draining cold air.
Is Antarctica or the Arctic colder?
Antarctica, by a wide margin. It is a high ice continent; the Arctic is sea ice over a relatively warm ocean that leaks heat upward. The coldest Antarctic reading is about 20°C colder than anything measured in the Northern Hemisphere.
What is the coldest temperature ever recorded in the US?
−80°F (−62.2°C) at Prospect Creek, Alaska, on 23 January 1971 (official reading −79.8°F) — still the US record by a wide margin.
Keep Exploring
See the other extreme in the hottest places on Earth, the US cold picture in the coldest temperatures ever recorded and the coldest cities in America, the European angle in the coldest places in Europe, the winter extreme in the snowiest places on Earth, or browse all our weather records.
Sources
Global and Northern Hemisphere air-temperature records are from the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes (Vostok −89.2°C, 1983; Klinck/Greenland −69.6°C, 1991). The satellite surface figures are from NASA/USGS (−93.2°C, 2010) and a 2018 National Snow and Ice Data Center reanalysis (~−98°C). Snag, Yukon (−63°C, 1947) is from Environment Canada / Parks Canada. The US record, Prospect Creek (−80°F, 1971), is from our own NOAA-derived state records. Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk figures are from Roshydromet / Guinness World Records.