Nature & Environment
NASA Spots Coldest Place on Earth in Antarctica at a Record -94.7C [VIDEO]
Benita Matilda
First Posted: Dec 10, 2013 05:08 AM EST
NASA has spotted the coldest place on Earth in the East Antarctica Plateau peak. This finding will help uncover some of the hidden mysteries under the ice covered continent.
NASA announced the discovery of the coldest place on Earth after examining global surface temperature data collected over a period of 32 years by remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8.
The coldest spot identified is a high ridge located on the East Antarctic Plateau where the temperatures drop below -133.6 degree Fahrenheit during winters. This new record temperature on the icy plateau was set on Aug.10, 2010.
The research team was led by Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who discovered that the temperatures dropped to a record of low, several times, in clusters of pockets near an ice ridge located between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two ice summits on the East Antarctica Plateau.
"We had a suspicion this Antarctic ridge was likely to be extremely cold, and colder than Vostok because it's higher up the hill," Scambos said in a statement. "With the launch of Landsat 8, we finally had a sensor capable of really investigating this area in more detail."
The new record is in fact several degrees colder than the previous low of -128.6 Fahrenheit that was set at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica in 1983.
Scientists discovered this coldest spot on Earth while studying the large snow dunes formed by winds blowing across the East Antarctic Plateau. On a closer look they spotted cracks present in the snow surface between the dunes that most likely form when the temperatures during the winter fall so low that the snow layer present on the top shrinks. This ignited a curiosity in the scientists to estimate the range of temperatures and pushed them to look for coldest places on Earth using two kinds of satellite sensors.
"The record-breaking conditions seem to happen when a wind pattern or an atmospheric pressure gradient tries to move the air back uphill, pushing against the air that was sliding down," Scambos said. "This allows the air in the low hollows to remain there longer and cool even further under the clear, extremely dry sky conditions," Scambos said. "When the cold air lingers in these pockets it reaches ultra-low temperatures."
The two sensitive instruments namely, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA satellite have the capacity to identify the thermal radiation that is emitted from the surface of the Earth, even in those regions that lack heat.
Using this, the researchers spotted the cold temperatures present on the ridge spread across 620 miles at a high elevation between Argus and Fuji. Colder temperatures were present in the compartments between the ridges.
The researchers suspect that a layer in the atmosphere that is present above the ice plateau attains a certain minimum temperature and prevents the ice plateaus from getting colder.
"There seems to be a physical limit to how cold it can get in this high plateau area and how much heat can escape," Scambos said. "The levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, traces of water vapor and other gases in the air may impose a more or less uniform limit on how much heat can radiate from the surface."
The team further plans on putting weather stations in the area where the record temperatures occur in order to confirm the data accumulated by Landsat8.
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First Posted: Dec 10, 2013 05:08 AM EST
NASA has spotted the coldest place on Earth in the East Antarctica Plateau peak. This finding will help uncover some of the hidden mysteries under the ice covered continent.
NASA announced the discovery of the coldest place on Earth after examining global surface temperature data collected over a period of 32 years by remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8.
The coldest spot identified is a high ridge located on the East Antarctic Plateau where the temperatures drop below -133.6 degree Fahrenheit during winters. This new record temperature on the icy plateau was set on Aug.10, 2010.
The research team was led by Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who discovered that the temperatures dropped to a record of low, several times, in clusters of pockets near an ice ridge located between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two ice summits on the East Antarctica Plateau.
"We had a suspicion this Antarctic ridge was likely to be extremely cold, and colder than Vostok because it's higher up the hill," Scambos said in a statement. "With the launch of Landsat 8, we finally had a sensor capable of really investigating this area in more detail."
The new record is in fact several degrees colder than the previous low of -128.6 Fahrenheit that was set at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica in 1983.
Scientists discovered this coldest spot on Earth while studying the large snow dunes formed by winds blowing across the East Antarctic Plateau. On a closer look they spotted cracks present in the snow surface between the dunes that most likely form when the temperatures during the winter fall so low that the snow layer present on the top shrinks. This ignited a curiosity in the scientists to estimate the range of temperatures and pushed them to look for coldest places on Earth using two kinds of satellite sensors.
"The record-breaking conditions seem to happen when a wind pattern or an atmospheric pressure gradient tries to move the air back uphill, pushing against the air that was sliding down," Scambos said. "This allows the air in the low hollows to remain there longer and cool even further under the clear, extremely dry sky conditions," Scambos said. "When the cold air lingers in these pockets it reaches ultra-low temperatures."
The two sensitive instruments namely, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA satellite have the capacity to identify the thermal radiation that is emitted from the surface of the Earth, even in those regions that lack heat.
Using this, the researchers spotted the cold temperatures present on the ridge spread across 620 miles at a high elevation between Argus and Fuji. Colder temperatures were present in the compartments between the ridges.
The researchers suspect that a layer in the atmosphere that is present above the ice plateau attains a certain minimum temperature and prevents the ice plateaus from getting colder.
"There seems to be a physical limit to how cold it can get in this high plateau area and how much heat can escape," Scambos said. "The levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, traces of water vapor and other gases in the air may impose a more or less uniform limit on how much heat can radiate from the surface."
The team further plans on putting weather stations in the area where the record temperatures occur in order to confirm the data accumulated by Landsat8.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone