APOD: The Coldest Place on Earth (2013 Dec 11)

[orin stepanek]

The coldest place on Earth? I wouldn't go there! There is enough cold here in Nebraska!

We all know, Orin, that if they offered you the chance to be the first man to land on Pluto you couldn't possibly refuse.

Na! I'd have to refuse; I'm alergic to the cold! I'll have to rely on New Horizon's data as it comes in. Maybe; if some day Pluto gets pulled into the habitable zone.

[Remo]

Sorry, the "record" is not valid!

Satellites measure ground temperature. Satellites do it by picking up the infrared/black body radiation radiating back into space. Temperature records use air temperature 2 meters above the ground (or the ice). Air does not radiate as a black body. Diatomic gas molecules only radiate at specific wavelengths and are pretty much thermally invisible. Triatomic molecules (such as CO2 and H2O) are a bit better radiators/absobers (which is why they can act as greenhouse gases), but they are not black bodies. They have lots of peaks and valleys. Moreover at the temperatures in question, bot CO2 and H20 have frozen out of the air.

Have you ever slept out at night on a clear night in the desert or someplace else with a dry atmosphere. It can feel brutally cold even though the air temperature is not that low, and you can get frost in the morning on your sleeping bag. Why? Because half your body is staring out at 2.73 K, with little IR radiating back down from the warmer air. The atmosphere is "optically thin".

As an aside. My house has a lot of windows on one side. On a very cold day, I have to set the air temperature higher because it just feels cold. This is because there is a lot of IR radiating from my body, and much less coming in from the outside.

In other words, the air and the ground are not the same temperature, and one would expect that under nighttime clear skies the ground temperature would be lower.

[Chris Peterson]

Have you ever slept out at night on a clear night in the desert or someplace else with a dry atmosphere. It can feel brutally cold even though the air temperature is not that low, and you can get frost in the morning on your sleeping bag. Why? Because half your body is staring out at 2.73 K, with little IR radiating back down from the warmer air. The atmosphere is "optically thin".

Not that thin!

The temperature of a clear, dry sky is usually around -40°C (the lowest I've measured is -70°C). That is determined by the radiative properties of several constituents, particularly water.

The sky is cold, which is why we can easily get frost when the air temperature is above freezing. But thankfully, the sky isn't at 2.7 K!

I monitor the weather here, and my thermometer is on a rise, so it pretty accurately reflects the true air temperature. The biggest extreme I've seen from radiative cooling was a measurement of 14°F from my station, and a simultaneous measurement a couple of miles away, in a valley, of -34°F. I've had dog water bowls ice over when the air temperature was around 50°F.

[Anthony Barreiro]

It seems that from the South Pole, every point is "north". If "west" is to one's right when looking at a map facing northward, Antarctica's "west" would change as one turned around ... As silly as it sounds, how did West and East Antarctica get their names?

• It was an occidental coincidence:

Yes, those who draw the maps get to decide what to call the directions. In linguistics they say that "a language is a dialect with an army." I suppose in cartography it helps to have a navy.

[neufer]

I've had dog water bowls ice over when the air temperature was around 50°F.

Yes...I think that was Remo's primary point: that the ground temperature isn't necessarily representative of the air temperature 2 meters above the ground...which, in fact, is the reason one observes many mirages.

Still...I'd trust the calibrated satellite over fallible individuals (e.g., Remo's reported 2.73 K).

[Cousin Ricky]

They are in metres and indicate the elevation of the top of the ice. The highest elevation in Antarctica is almost 5000m, at Vinson Massif in western Antarctica, although that area is not nearly as vast as the eastern ice shelf.

According to this link, if you don't consider the ice, the highest elevation in Antarctica is less than 3000m:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartne ... l-the-ice/

I have flown over Vinson Massif. There are not 2 km of ice on top of that mountain.

[Nitpicker]

They are in metres and indicate the elevation of the top of the ice. The highest elevation in Antarctica is almost 5000m, at Vinson Massif in western Antarctica, although that area is not nearly as vast as the eastern ice shelf.

According to this link, if you don't consider the ice, the highest elevation in Antarctica is less than 3000m:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartne ... l-the-ice/

I have flown over Vinson Massif. There are not 2 km of ice on top of that mountain.

Thanks Cousin Ricky. That sounds like a more reliable piece of evidence than the one I quoted. I merely extracted and estimated the 3000m from the scale of the coloured elevation map in the link, which went to "2800+" metres, which was probably a bit foolhardy of me.

[Nitpicker]

But I was questioning your comment: "the highest elevation in Antarctica is less than 3000m"

There is uncertainty about the high end of the scale in the coloured ice-free elevation map I linked to.

[Ann]

Have you ever slept out at night on a clear night in the desert or someplace else with a dry atmosphere. It can feel brutally cold even though the air temperature is not that low, and you can get frost in the morning on your sleeping bag. Why? Because half your body is staring out at 2.73 K, with little IR radiating back down from the warmer air. The atmosphere is "optically thin".

Not that thin!

The temperature of a clear, dry sky is usually around -40°C (the lowest I've measured is -70°C). That is determined by the radiative properties of several constituents, particularly water.

The sky is cold, which is why we can easily get frost when the air temperature is above freezing. But thankfully, the sky isn't at 2.7 K!

I monitor the weather here, and my thermometer is on a rise, so it pretty accurately reflects the true air temperature. The biggest extreme I've seen from radiative cooling was a measurement of 14°F from my station, and a simultaneous measurement a couple of miles away, in a valley, of -34°F. I've had dog water bowls ice over when the air temperature was around 50°F.

I thought temperatures on the ground are usually colder than temperatures some two meters above ground.

I remember an evening several years ago in December. It had been raining, and it was overcast. The thermometer outside my window said that the air temperature next to my house was about +4. Suddenly it cleared up. It was dark outside, unsurprisingly (in Sweden we get about eight hours of daylight and sixteen hours of darkness in December). I was going somewhere, so I got my bicycle, mounted it, cycled (illegally) a short distance along a path until I had to make a sharp turn when I got to the street. When I made that sharp turn, I immediately fell. Even though the air temperature was well above freezing, the wetness on the pavement had turned into a smooth sheet of ice when the clouds parted. It was incredibly slippery.

Ann

[Beyond]

See what happens when you go the 'illegal' route

[Ann]

See what happens when you go the 'illegal' route

Nothing so far. I'm perfectly allowed to walk there, but not to cycle there. If someone is walking there, I walk too, of course. But if the path is empty, I cycle.

Ann

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF][size=175]Always best to stay above the pavement[/size][/color][/b] :!:

---

I thought temperatures on the ground are usually colder than temperatures some two meters above ground.

I remember an evening several years ago in December. It had been raining, and it was overcast. The thermometer outside my window said that the air temperature next to my house was about +4. Suddenly it cleared up. It was dark outside, unsurprisingly (in Sweden we get about eight hours of daylight and sixteen hours of darkness in December). I was going somewhere, so I got my bicycle, mounted it, cycled (illegally) a short distance along a path until I had to make a sharp turn when I got to the street. When I made that sharp turn, I immediately fell. Even though the air temperature was well above freezing, the wetness on the pavement had turned into a smooth sheet of ice when the clouds parted. It was incredibly slippery.

[EdMars]

When defending the metric system to all those darn Americans out there like myself, I've always challenged people to wonder what the temperature of zero would possibly represent on the Fahrenheit scale? (I know the temperature of the human body was "supposed" to be one hundred degrees, but that still doesn't answer the question.) Isn't is interesting that the Earth itself practically provides the answer!!! (In other words, "What temperature in degrees F. would you get awfully close to if you averaged the highest recorded temperature on Earth with the lowest?") What a wonderfully weird coincidence, huh?!

[weberpxw]

Can you add more to put this into context? Is this new record low temperature a sign of cooling of the Antarctic region, or is it simply from looking in a place where no one has generally looked before? The Vostok record is for an inhabited place, and the new record is a very remote site. It would be interesting to know if the location of the new record low has seen even colder temperatures in the past. And, how far back do the temperature records at Vostok go?

I can certainly see Glenn Beck and many other scientific commentators picking on this announcement as further "proof" that no warming is happening on Earth.

[neufer]

When defending the metric system to all those darn Americans out there like myself, I've always challenged people to wonder what the temperature of zero would possibly represent on the Fahrenheit scale? (I know the temperature of the human body was "supposed" to be one hundred degrees, but that still doesn't answer the question.) Isn't is interesting that the Earth itself practically provides the answer!!! (In other words, "What temperature in degrees F. would you get awfully close to if you averaged the highest recorded temperature on Earth with the lowest?") What a wonderfully weird coincidence, huh?!

• It's frigorific

<<Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish physicist, engineer, and glass blower who is best known for inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer (1714), and for developing a temperature scale now named after him.

According to Fahrenheit's 1724 article, he determined his scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature. The lowest temperature was achieved by preparing a frigorific mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a salt), and waiting for it to reach equilibrium. The thermometer then was placed into the mixture and the liquid in the thermometer allowed to descend to its lowest point. The thermometer's reading there was taken as 0 °F. The second reference point was selected as the reading of the thermometer when it was placed in still water when ice was just forming on the surface. This was assigned as 32 °F. The third calibration point, taken as 96 °F, was selected as the thermometer's reading when the instrument was placed under the arm or in the mouth.

Work by others showed that water boils about 180 degrees above its freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale later was redefined to make the freezing-to-boiling interval exactly 180 degrees, a convenient value as 180 is a highly composite number, meaning that it is evenly divisible into many fractions. It is because of the scale's redefinition that normal body temperature today is taken as 98.6 degrees, whereas it was 96 degrees on Fahrenheit's original scale. The Fahrenheit scale is still used for everyday temperature measurements by the general population in the United States and Belize and, less so, in the UK and Canada.>>

[neufer]

Can you add more to put this into context? Is this new record low temperature a sign of cooling of the Antarctic region, or is it simply from looking in a place where no one has generally looked before?

It is looking in a place where no one has looked before.

One can see from the APOD that the temperatures are colder higher up than Vostok Station
(and the satellite measurements are probably calibrated against the temperature measurements at Vostok).

The Vostok record is for an inhabited place, and the new record is a very remote site. It would be interesting to know if the location of the new record low has seen even colder temperatures in the past. And, how far back do the temperature records at Vostok go?

• 56 years as of December 16

<<Vostok station was established on 16 December 1957 (during the International Geophysical Year) by the 2nd Soviet Antarctic Expedition and was operated year-round for more than 37 years. The station was temporarily closed from February to November 1994.

Vostok is the World Pole of Cold. During the long winter, temperatures average about −65 °C; in the brief summer, about −30 °C. The lowest reliably measured temperature on Earth of −89.2 °C was in Vostok on 21 July 1983. This beat the station's former record of -88.3°C on 24 August 1960. Though unconfirmed, it has been reported that Vostok reached the temperature of −91 °C during the winter of 1997. Lower temperatures occurred higher up towards the summit of the ice sheet as temperature decreases with height along the surface.

Acclimatization to such conditions can take from a week to two months and is accompanied by headaches, eye twitches, ear pains, nose bleeds, perceived suffocation, sudden rises in blood pressure, loss of sleep, reduced appetite, vomiting, joint and muscle pain, arthritis, and weight loss of 3–5 kg.>>

...

I can certainly see Glenn Beck and many other scientific commentators picking on this announcement as further "proof" that no warming is happening on Earth.

...

Glenn Beck is a scientific commentator

Is Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee a scientific commentator

...

[Chris Peterson]

Can you add more to put this into context? Is this new record low temperature a sign of cooling of the Antarctic region, or is it simply from looking in a place where no one has generally looked before? The Vostok record is for an inhabited place, and the new record is a very remote site. It would be interesting to know if the location of the new record low has seen even colder temperatures in the past. And, how far back do the temperature records at Vostok go?

I can't answer the specifics, but in general, individual temperatures (record or not) can't be tied to climatic patterns. One has to look at trends for long periods to do that.

I can certainly see Glenn Beck and many other scientific commentators picking on this announcement as further "proof" that no warming is happening on Earth.

Please tell me that you didn't mean this the way it sounds! Glenn Beck is a scientific commentator the way Dr Pepper is a heart surgeon.

What those sort of science deniers choose to ignore is the entire concept of energy flow and climate. It's called "global warming" because the energy balance as shifted such that the Earth is absorbing more energy than it's releasing, creating a net increase in stored heat. But surface temperatures are defined by a complex system of interacting water and air. Heating the Earth doesn't mean the temperature goes up everywhere. In fact, it goes up in some places and down in others. Under the right conditions, it could even go down over all the land area, given the amount of heat that can be stored in the oceans. It's a complex matter, and one quite open to investigation and explanation- explanations that are completely ignored by the deniers.

[geckzilla]

The politics rule is somehow the most difficult one to enforce here.

[Chris Peterson]

The politics rule is somehow the most difficult one to enforce here. :doh:

Well, yes. But I took the original question to be quite valid and unpolitical. Asking a question about something that might possibly be seen as climate change denial (or anything else on the fringe) is very different than making an assertion. We do a service in answering honest questions. The moderator's axe should be there to cut off unfounded denial or continued insistence on unscientific views, not the sort of questions that people might genuinely have given the sort of stuff seen in the mainstream media.

[geckzilla]

Which is completely fair but I've noticed even the most simple mention of anything political has a tendency to quickly spiral out of control. Bob and Jerry have also communicated that they would never want APOD to appear partial to any political group and due to Asterisk's relationship with APOD this carries over to the forum. It drives me insane trying to figure out how to handle that.

[Chris Peterson]

Which is completely fair but I've noticed even the most simple mention of anything political has a tendency to quickly spiral out of control. Bob and Jerry have also communicated that they would never want APOD to appear partial to any political group and due to Asterisk's relationship with APOD this carries over to the forum. It drives me insane trying to figure out how to handle that.

I'd say you (and all the moderators) have managed it very well. It is rare indeed for things to get out of control, but neither does it feel like Big Brother is watching.

(And to be fair, APOD can't expect to post a subject like this and not allow for a little bit of discussion about the subject of climate change. I'm surprised there hasn't been more, and pleased that this particular posting didn't draw in the crazies, as has sometimes happened in the past.)

[BMAONE23]

It seems that from the South Pole, every point is "north". If "west" is to one's right when looking at a map facing northward, Antarctica's "west" would change as one turned around ... As silly as it sounds, how did West and East Antarctica get their names?

• It was an occidental coincidence:

Yes, those who draw the maps get to decide what to call the directions. In linguistics they say that "a language is a dialect with an army." I suppose in cartography it helps to have a navy.

The difference between eastern and western Antarctic regions is dividednby the prime meridian and dateline. Western Antarctica resides in the western hemisphere west of the prime meridian and Eastern Antarctica falls east of the prime meridian, in the eastern hemisphere.

[neufer]

---

The difference between eastern and western Antarctic regions is divided by the prime meridian and dateline. Western Antarctica resides in the western hemisphere west of the prime meridian and Eastern Antarctica falls east of the prime meridian, in the eastern hemisphere.

• Well...more or less.

Halley Research Station (named after the astronomer Edmond Halley) at 76°S, 27°W is clearly in East Antarctica.

Halley Station is famous for publishing the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985. The Japanese at Syowa should have been the first to publish the discovery of the ozone hole but peer review rejected their submissions on the grounds that their (accurate) ground based ozone measurements (in Dobson units {capitalized}) were too low to be believed.

[Remo]

Have you ever slept out at night on a clear night in the desert or someplace else with a dry atmosphere. It can feel brutally cold even though the air temperature is not that low, and you can get frost in the morning on your sleeping bag. Why? Because half your body is staring out at 2.73 K, with little IR radiating back down from the warmer air. The atmosphere is "optically thin".

Not that thin!

The temperature of a clear, dry sky is usually around -40°C (the lowest I've measured is -70°C). That is determined by the radiative properties of several constituents, particularly water.

The sky is cold, which is why we can easily get frost when the air temperature is above freezing. But thankfully, the sky isn't at 2.7 K!

I monitor the weather here, and my thermometer is on a rise, so it pretty accurately reflects the true air temperature. The biggest extreme I've seen from radiative cooling was a measurement of 14°F from my station, and a simultaneous measurement a couple of miles away, in a valley, of -34°F. I've had dog water bowls ice over when the air temperature was around 50°F.

Eh, Chris,

Point taken. You are absolutely correct that the sky temperature we "see" on a cold clear night, is not the temperature of the cosmic background radiation but some mix of the CMBR plus IR radiation coming from the atmosphere.

To clarify my point (I know I got a little technical; now I, guess I get even more technical), the atmosphere is "optically thin" because you can see through it in both the optical and the IR spectrums. May get some haziness, but the absorption is less than ( 1 - 1/e ) or ~63.2%. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_depth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_de ... rophysics). This is less than the mean distance a photon would travel before it gets absorbed.

As we both agree, on a clear night, we do see the 2.7K polluted by the IR absorption of by H2O ( and to a lesser extent CO2 and other greenhouse gases )from ground radiating IR and then reradiating the IR back to the earth. And it is noteworthy that the absorption/radiation spectrum of CO2 and H20 are not a blanket in the IR, but have selective (and kind'a mushy) frequencies. So if you pick your frequencies right, you can get some really cold background radiation readings.

If, as you said, you got a -70C sky reading (impressive!), an awful lot of what you were seeing is background temperature mixed in with some IR pollution from the atmosphere. Don't forget that blackbody radiation is proportional to the T^4 so ~ 75% of what you were seeing was the cold, cold universe.

Given that those Antarctic temperatures were done at 4000m (where air pressure is halved), at virtually zero humidity, and with a cold land temperature and no sunlight for months, the sky temperature must be really, really cold. http://asterisk.apod.com/images/smilies ... iggrin.gif

[Anthony Barreiro]

Yes, those who draw the maps get to decide what to call the directions. In linguistics they say that "a language is a dialect with an army." I suppose in cartography it helps to have a navy.

The difference between eastern and western Antarctic regions is dividednby the prime meridian and dateline. Western Antarctica resides in the western hemisphere west of the prime meridian and Eastern Antarctica falls east of the prime meridian, in the eastern hemisphere.

Yes, and the prime meridian, established by international treaty in 1884, just happens to run through the capital city of the biggest global empire of the nineteenth century. This is probably not a coincidence. (Moderators -- when does "politics" become "history"? )