Just looking at this map of the coldest places on Earth is enough to make you chilly.

East Antarctica has set a new record for ‘soul-crushing’ cold, recording 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit below zero on the mercury, or minus 93.2 degrees Celsius, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Scientists say that is so cold it hurts to breathe.

A new look at NASA satellite data revealed that Earth set a new record for coldest temperature recorded on August 2010, then on July 31 of this year, it came close again, getting to minus 135.3 degrees, again in East Antarctica. The old record had been -128.6 degrees, which is -89.2 degrees Celsius.

Ice scientist Ted Scambos said the new record is ’50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota.’

 

However, it won’t be in the Guinness Book of World Records because these were satellite measured, not from thermometers, Scambos said.

‘Thank God, I don’t know how exactly it feels,’ Scambos said. But he said scientists do routinely make naked 100 degree below zero dashes outside in the South Pole, so people can survive that temperature for about three minutes.

Just because one spot on Earth has set records for cold that has little to do with global warming because it is one spot in one place, said Waleed Abdalati, an ice scientist at the University of Colorado and NASA’s former chief scientist.

 

 

Tags: Antarctica, The coldest place