Record cold in Siberia

At the beginning of the year, Siberia experienced exceptionally low temperatures, some exceeding previously set cold records. Part of the Siberian territory, especially at the Sakha Republic in Yakutia, saw the mercury exceed -50˚C and even -60˚C. On January 15, a temperature of -62.4˚C was recorded in the locality of Tongulakh, a record for a station that has been taking readings since 1959, followed by a temperature of -62.3˚C the next day.

You have to go back to 2002 to find a lower temperature in Russia, and to 1982 for a lower temperature in at least January. For other stations in the same region, such as Saskylah and Selagoncy, you also have to go back 30 years to find lower temperatures. This cold spell is remarkable for both its intensity and duration because a week earlier temperatures below -60˚C were recorded at the Zhilinda and Olenek stations.

Thermometers in the Siberian outpost have been shattered this week.

Sakha Life/The Siberian Times

However, the oldest temperature measuring stations had already recorded lower lows than those recorded this year during the 19th and early 20th centuries, so the records reached in 2023 concern stations considered relatively young. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere excluding Greenland was -67.8˚C recorded at the Verkhoyansk and Yimiakon stations in Yakutia in February 1892 and January 1933.

The official absolute low-temperature record was recorded in Greenland, at Klinck at 3,105 meters above sea level on December 22, 1991, and stands at -69.6˚C. For comparison, the lowest recorded and approved temperature on Earth was measured in Antarctica at -89.2˚C on July 21, 1983, while the extreme temperatures recorded this year in Siberia correspond to the average temperatures on the planet Mars.

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