Antarctica's Concordia Station records lowest temperature in 14 years

On 18 July, the Concordia research station on the Antarctic plateau measured a temperature of –84.1 °C (‑119.4 °F), the coldest reading anywhere on Earth since 2012. The reading, confirmed by the French Polar Institute Paul‑Émile Victor (IPEV) and Italy’s National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), is just 0.6 °C above the station’s all‑time low of –84.7 °C set in the winter of 2010.

Concordia sits over 3 000 m above sea level, about 600 miles inland, and during the polar night experiences continuous darkness, extremely dry air and clear skies that allow heat to escape to space. Station leader Gabriele Carugati said the extreme low “illustrates how variable Antarctic weather can still be” and noted that temperatures below –84 °C are rare even for Concordia.

The record comes as the Northern Hemisphere endures a historic heatwave, highlighting the stark contrast between warming trends elsewhere and the severe cold that can still occur in Antarctica. For context, the previous global low was –119.6 °F at Russia’s Vostok Station in 2012, and the all‑time Earth low remains –128.6 °F recorded at Vostok in 1983.