🌅 Earth’s Lowest Recorded Temperature in More than a Decade

SOURCE

Live Science

WHAT TO KNOW

• Researchers at the French-Italian Concordia research station in East Antarctica recorded a low temperature of minus 119.4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 84.1 degrees Celsius) on July 18, the lowest temperature recorded on Earth since 2012. Concordia is located in the Antarctic interior, which is currently in the dead of winter and receives no sunlight. Temperatures regularly drop below -112°F (-80°C) during this time of year; however, the temperature recorded at Concordia is still significant as it approached the station’s all-time low of -120.5°F (-84.7°C) recorded during the winter of 2010. The temperatures recorded at Concordia are comfortably above the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -128.6°F (-89.2°C) at Russia’s Vostok weather station in July 1983.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The reading at Concordia came just weeks after Argentina’s Esperanza base, located on Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, the northern tip of the broader Antarctic Peninsula, recorded a balmy 59.7°F (15.4°C) on June 6, marking a new winter high for the continent. Experts describe the unusually warm temperature at Esperanza as a “huge anomaly,” noting it’s about 36°F above normal for this time of year. The temperature was recorded amid a prolonged Antarctic heatwave, during which temperatures rose above freezing for three consecutive weeks.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Concordia is considered the world’s most remote and extreme research station. The station—continuously inhabited since 2005 and one of only three located in the Antarctic interior—sits atop a 10,800-foot-thick ice cap more than 600 miles from the coast. Planes can’t fly to Concordia during winter, and with the nearest research station located some 370 miles away, Concordia’s winter crews are technically more isolated than astronauts on the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth around 250 miles above the surface.