The Pole of Cold tours

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The Poles of Cold are the places in the Northern and Southern hemispheres where the lowest air temperatures were recorded.

In the Northern hemisphere, there are two places in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Siberia, Russia that vie for the honour of being considered the "Pole of Cold". These are Verkhoyansk (located at 67°33′N 133°23′E / 67.55°N 133.383°E / 67.55; 133.383) and Oymyakon (located at 63°15′N 143°9′E / 63.25°N 143.15°E / 63.25; 143.15).

In December 1868 and then in February 1869 I. A. Khudyakov made the discovery of the Northern Pole of Cold by measuring a record temperature of -63.2 °C (-82 °F) in Verkhoyansk. Later, on January 15, 1885 a temperature of -67.8 °C (-90 °F) was registered there by S. F. Kovalik, which became the new world record, and still holds the record for the northern hemisphere. This measurement was published in the Annals of the General Physical Observatory in 1892; however, by mistake was written as -69.8 °C (-94 °F) , which was later corrected. One can still find this incorrect value in some literature.

On February 6, 1933, an absolute minimum of -67.7 °C (-90 °F) was registered in Oymyakon. On January 26, 1926, an astoundingly frigid temperature of -71.2 °C (-96 °F) is said to have been measured in Oymyakon, however it was obtained by extrapolation method rather than measured directly, and thus is not valid as a world record.

However, the conventional practice is to round the measurement to the nearest degree Celsius. In this convention, the two places share the world record of -68 °C (-90.4 °F). On the other hand, it is not correct to compare the data measured in different years with different equipment and different uncertainties. A more correct procedure is to compare average temperatures over large periods of time. On the average, the temperature at Oymyakon appeared to be lower than at Verkhoyansk during 70 years of simultaneous observations.

Another possible candidate is the isolated settlement of Tomtor, also in Sakha, which holds the record of low temperature among the places with permanent residents.