On December 22, 1991, a record of cold was recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, with a temperature of -69.6ºC in Greenland – announced on Wednesday (23) the Meteorological Institute of Denmark (DMI), 28 years later.
This reading was made by a measuring station that does not belong to the usual network of temperature stations.
It was detected by “climate detectives” before being confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) – hence its late publication.
“The record (for the Northern Hemisphere) was recorded at an altitude of 3,105 meters, near the polar cap, at an automatic measurement station called Klinck,” said the DMI in a statement.
“There have been many heat records in the past decade and it is important to recognize extremes,” John Cappelen, a climatologist at DMI, told AFP.
“The possibility of achieving a new cold record is running out, but I cannot say that it will never be registered again,” he reiterated.
Previously, the record for the Northern Hemisphere was -67.8 ºC and had been registered in Russia on two occasions: in 1892 and 1933.
The lowest temperature ever observed in the world is -89.2ºC. The high-altitude weather station in Vostok, Antarctica, has maintained this record since July 21, 1983.
