Vostok Station

Assembled from 30 blocks · 2 evidence · 50 related

1. Story
2. A Russian station high on the East Antarctic plateau, at an elevation of well over three kilometres and far from any coast, where the lowest reliably measured air temperature on the Earth's surface was recorded on 21 July 1983: minus 89.2 degrees Celsius. Satellite thermal imaging has since identified snow-surface temperatures near minus 98 degrees Celsius in shallow hollows on the plateau, but that is a skin temperature of the snow measured from orbit and is not the same quantity as a screen air temperature at a station, and conflating the two is the commonest error made about this record. Vostok also sits above Lake Vostok, a large body of liquid water sealed beneath roughly four kilometres of ice, and the deep ice core drilled there yielded one of the long records of atmospheric composition that made the ice-core reconstruction of past climate possible.
3. Knowledge
4. Antarctica
5. Vostok Station
6. Connections
7. Antarctica
8. The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once
9. Vostok records minus 89.2 degrees Celsius
10. Arctic Ocean
11. Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)
12. Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri)
13. Halley Bay Emperor Penguin Colony
14. The Antarctic Treaty (1959)
15. McMurdo Station
16. Vostok Station
17. Cook crosses the Antarctic Circle
18. Antarctica is sighted - by whom is disputed
19. Amundsen reaches the South Pole
20. Scott reaches the South Pole and finds he is second
21. The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once
22. The Antarctic Treaty is signed at Washington
23. The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins
24. Vostok records minus 89.2 degrees Celsius
25. Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
26. The Madrid Protocol becomes open to a review conference
27. Southern Ocean
28. Evidence
29. The lowest air temperature reliably measured at the surface of the Earth is minus 89.2 degrees Celsius, recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica, on 21 July 1983. V55 VERIFICATION BASIS: the archive was not opened during production; no research channel was available. The value and date rest on the producer's prior knowledge and should be confirmed against the WMO archive entry.
30. Satellite thermal infrared mapping identified snow-surface temperatures approaching minus 98 degrees Celsius in shallow topographic hollows on the East Antarctic plateau under clear, dry, calm conditions. This is a snow skin temperature measured from orbit and is not equivalent to a screened air temperature at a station, so it does not supersede the Vostok air-temperature record. V55 VERIFICATION BASIS: not opened during production; no research channel was available. The value is quoted approximately and the DOI must be confirmed before publication.