Review of satellite infrared readings indicate one spot in Antarctica dropped to -135° F:
We’re talking “nighttime on Hoth” cold here. For comparison, dry ice is only -109° F; acetylene welding gas solidifies at -119°F; nitrous oxide liquifies at -128°F. Gasoline is a rubbery solid at these temperatures. Reportedly breathing air this cold without some sort of pre-warming device would kill you.
And that’s not counting the wind chill. 
Damn global warming ;);)
That is freakin cold!
With that temperature I’m betting Sears died hard.
So… would there be carbon-dioxide snow? Or is the partial pressure of CO[sub]2[/sub] too low?
Better put on a coat.
Don’t know if this is true or not, just throwing it out there. But I remember hearing/reading some time back that when you get down to -70ish there isn’t much wind because if there is any wind then there’s enough friction to start warming up the air again.
Anyone have any input on this being true or not?
Yes, they mentioned this on CNN. I can’t help thinking that the vast majority of locations on Earth do not have weather stations or any kind of thermometer. This record happened to be made at a specific location in Antarctica. There are probably many lower temperatures in other random locations.
getting a tad cold there
Wusses. In Wisconsin we don’t even put on a fleece jacket until it hits at least -150.
CO[sub]2[/sub] comprises about 400 parts per million in the atmosphere, compared to about 0.25% for water; but water can hit as high as 5%, and you only get rain or snow where the local water vapour concentration is getting towards the high end, which CO[sub]2[/sub] never does. If there’s any sublimation to dry ice, I’d guess it’s on an unnoticeably small scale.
I have it on good authority that a logger will only button up his vest once it hits a hundred degrees below zero.
“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.
Good, important research into what temp is actually required to freeze your balls off.
Note that this temperature happened three years ago. Another temperature almost as low happened this year. These temperatures were measured by satellite. These two satellite-measured temperatures beat out by several degrees the lowest one measured by thermometer, which was thirty years ago. Can anyone tell us how temperature is measured by satellite? Note that the article says that The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t accept satellite-measured temperatures.
Can’t say for sure how that particular satellite does it, but non-contact temperature measurement is nothing new. The typical method measures surface temperatures by measuring the intensity of infrared light emission (which correspond to temperature). If the air temperature has been stable for a long time, then the temperature of the ground will be a good proxy. There are however assumptions that must be made about surface emissivity and of course about the relationship between air temperature and surface temperature, and ambient illumination, which may explain why Guiness doesn’t accept temperatures measured in this way.
Two-color pyrometry checks the ratio of intensities between two different wavelengths of IR emissions, and should be more accurate.
I have a handheld IR thermometer at home, very useful for measuring hard-to-reach or exceedingly hot surfaces.
There are colder places than that. Like -160 C/-256 F kind of colder. Unlike the sauna goers in the 300 club though, you’d better not be wet when you go into them. Cryosaunas may actually do what they claim.
How long have we had satellite IR sensors good enough to determine surface temperatures? Makes me wonder how long this new record will last.
I’m offficially retiring the witches in brass bras. Now it’s “colder than a scientist’s titties at the South Pole”.
Smileys noted, but of course this isn’t a case of it getting colder in 2010 than it had ever got before. It’s a case of changing the rules, and searching an entire continent for a low temperature rather than the handful of spots that happen to have weather stations.
If they same method was applied to the USA, say, then you can bet a new record low for the nation would be discovered.
In any case, temperatures are meant to be recorded at a set height above the ground, in a screened enclosure. What these satellite measurements seem to have recorded is the ground temperature, which is generally several degrees lower than the screen air temperature. (You can get a ground frost when the air temperature is well above freezing.)