The Story Behind Earth's Coldest Temperature Ever

The Vostok site in Antarctica initially was chosen by the Soviet Union for research aimed at drilling deep into ancient ice. French and, later, American scientists began to participate in coring activities at the site. This panoramic photo of Vostok Station shows the layout of the camp. The striped building on the left is the power station while the striped building on the right is where researchers sleep and take meals. The building in the background with the red- and white-striped ball on top is the meteorology building.

(Image credit: Todd Sowers, LDEO, Columbia University)

During the southern hemisphere winter of 1983, temperatures at Russia's Vostok research station in Antarctica plunged to a frighteningly cold minus 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 54 degrees colder than the winter average there and the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

Scientists have now figured out why it got so cold.

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They found that relatively warm air that normally flows over the Southern Ocean onto the high Antarctic plateau almost came to a halt during this period. A flow of cold air circling Vostok was preventing the mixing of this warmer air from lower latitudes, isolating the station and causing near optimum cooling conditions. Adding to this was the absence of a heat-trapping cloud cover and the presence of a layer of tiny particles of ice suspended in the air (known as diamond dust), allowing more heat from the continent’s icy surface to be lost to space.

"Distinguishing between natural variability and human induced changes to the Earth's atmospheric climate is at the heart of our research, and we wanted to understand why this 'normal' weather system was thrown out of balance so severely," said team member John Turner at the BAS. "Our findings indicate that this was a natural event, but this is an important reminder of just how extreme Earth’s natural events can be and that we must always consider the potential for such anomalies to occur."

Andrea Thompson is an associate editor at Scientific American, where she covers sustainability, energy and the environment. Prior to that, she was a senior writer covering climate science at Climate Central and a reporter and editor at Live Science, where she primarily covered Earth science and the environment. She holds a graduate degree in science health and environmental reporting from New York University, as well as a bachelor of science and and masters of science in atmospheric chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.