Pole of Cold - Northern Hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

In the Northern Hemisphere, there are two places in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Siberia, Russia that vie for the honour of being considered the "Pole of Cold". These are Verkhoyansk (located at 67°33′N 133°23′E / 67.55°N 133.383°E / 67.55; 133.383 (Verkhoyansk)) and Oymyakon (located at 63°15′N 143°9′E / 63.25°N 143.15°E / 63.25; 143.15 (Oymyakon)).

In December 1868 and then in February 1869 I. A. Khudyakov made the discovery of the Northern Pole of Cold by measuring a record temperature of −63.2 °C (−81.8 °F) in Verkhoyansk. Later, on January 15, 1885 a temperature of −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) was registered there by S. F. Kovalik. This became the new world record, and is still the record for the northern hemisphere. This measurement was published in the Annals of the General Physical Observatory in 1892; by mistake it was written as −69.8 °C (−93.6 °F), which was later corrected. One can still find this incorrect value in some literature.

In 1924, Russian scientist Sergey Obrychev registered the lowest temperature −71.2 °C (−96.2 °F). On February 6, 1933, a temperature of −67.7 °C (−89.9 °F) was recorded at Oymyakon's weather station. The weather station is in a valley between Oymyakon and Tomtor. The station is at 750 meters (2,460 ft) and the surrounding mountains at 1,100 meters (3,600 ft), causing cold air to pool in the valley: recent studies show that winter temperatures in the area increase with altitude by as much as +10 degrees C (+18 degrees F).

The conventional practice is to round the measurement to the nearest degree Celsius. In this convention, the two places share the Northern Hemisphere record of −68 °C (−90 °F). On the other hand, some meteorologists say it is wrong to compare the data measured in different years with different equipment and different uncertainties. A more correct procedure is to compare average temperatures over large periods of time. On the average, the temperature at Oymyakon appeared to be lower than at Verkhoyansk over 70 years of simultaneous observations.

Another possible candidate is Mount Logan in Canada which recorded a temperature of −77.5 °C (−107.5 °F) in May 1991. This is quite controversial as it is at a very high altitude at nearly 6000 m (19,685 feet).