Lowest Temperatures Recorded on Each Continent

About This Dataset

This chart shows the lowest air temperature ever reliably recorded on each of the seven continents, in degrees Celsius. Antarctica's Vostok Station holds the world record for the coldest place on Earth.

✨ AI Insight

Antarctica is in a class of its own, with a record low of -89.2C at Vostok Station in 1983, nearly 21 degrees colder than the next coldest continent. Asia ranks second at -67.8C, recorded in the Siberian towns of Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, the coldest permanently inhabited places on the planet. North America (-63.0C at Snag, Yukon) and Europe (-58.1C in northern Russia) also plunge below -55C. From there the cold eases sharply: South America bottoms out at -32.8C, and Africa (-24.0C at Ifrane, Morocco) and Oceania (-23.0C at Charlotte Pass, Australia) barely dip past -20C. The 66-degree spread between Antarctica and Australia mirrors the heat chart in reverse, underscoring how latitude, altitude and distance from the ocean drive Earth's most extreme cold.

Source: WMO / Lowest temperature recorded on Earth

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Oceania leads with -23 in All Time.