Coldest Temperatures Ever Recorded on Earth
About This Dataset
Coldest Temperatures Ever Recorded on Earth
The lowest temperatures ever officially recorded at specific locations, according to World Meteorological Organisation and scientific station records. The coldest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth's surface was -89.2ยฐC at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983 โ well below the temperature of dry ice.
Analysis
Vostok Station (Antarctica) (-89.2), Plateau Station (Antarctica) (-86.2) and Oymyakon (Russia) (-71.2) take the top three in Coldest Temperature (ยฐC) in 1983. Values run from -58.9 at the top to -89.2 at the bottom, a spread of 30.3. First and second are separated by 3, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Below the top two the field is tightly packed: the remaining 6 run from -58.9 down to -71.2.
Key Findings
๐
Vostok Station (Antarctica) records the lowest in Coldest Temperature (ยฐC) at -89.20 in 1983.
๐
1893 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- World Meteorological Organisation
- Coverage
- 8 entities ยท 1892โ1983 (8 years) ยท 8 observations
- Measure
- Coldest Temperature (ยฐC)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted โ the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Missing years are left empty rather than estimated โ no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
- Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
- The compound annual rate is (last รท first)^(1 รท years) โ 1, using those same two reported years.
- Entities are ranked lowest-first, because on this measure a lower number is the better result.
- An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed โ it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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