The record is minus 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 94.7 Celsius).
A new look at NASA satellite data revealed that Earth set a new record for coldest temperature recorded. It happened in August 2010 when it hit -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-94.7 Celsius). Then on July 31 of this year, it came close again: -135.3 degrees Fahrenheit (-92.9 Celsius).
The old record had been -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit (-89.2 Celsius).
Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced the cold facts at the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco yesterday.
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 Fahrenheit (73 degree below zero Celsius) dashes outside in the South Pole as a stunt, so people can survive that temperature for about three minutes.
Waleed Abdalati, an ice scientist at the University of Colorado and NASA's former chief scientist, and Scambos said this is likely an unusual random reading in a place that hasn't been measured much before and could have been colder or hotter in the past and we wouldn't know.
"It does speak to the range of conditions on this Earth, some of which we haven't been able to observe," Abdalati said.
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