Talk:Pole of Cold

I'm no geographer, but how can somewhere thousands of miles south of the north pole be colder than the north pole itself, in winter, assuming that the further north you get the colder it is?

Well, exactly this assumption is not always the case. Generally, yes, it gets colder at higher latitude, because the sunlight arrives at a lower angle. But other factors can overrule this rule of thumb. In some geological scenarios, the Arctic Ocean used to be a swampland earlier in the Earth's history. And Yakutia is so cold because it is surrounded to the East, West and South by high mountains holding the cold air from the Arctic ocean and keeping away warmer winds from the Pacific. Benzh 02:43, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistency with other article

 * In this article it is written -89.9°C as the temperature record in Vostok. However, in the Vostok, Antarctica article, it says -89.2°C. Please check the sources. Benzh 02:50, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if that's actually been resolved, or if someone just changed it so they agree, but either way, there is still a problem with Verkhoyansk (note the discussion here about an "error"...has that been verified?). Ardric47 04:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Concept of the pole
I'm reading Jules Verne's The Adventures of Captain Hatteras at the moment, and he makes a big deal of the "pole of cold", as Hatteras discovers a warmer region near the North Pole itself. My understanding from the notes is that Verne (and presumably the authors he used as his sources) thought of the poles as having a real existence (he thought there were two in the northern hemisphere). The "pole of cold", according to Verne, was not just a name for the place where the coldest temperature was recorded, but a place which had to be the coldest due to some physical law, analagous to the magnetic north pole or the rotational north pole. I'll try to summarise Verne's reasoning, but I'm sure there will be other references to this theory. --ajn (talk) 13:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting it be included in a mythology section? No offense, but it's hard to tell from your phrasing, but it almost sounds like you are taking seriously Jules Verne's theory... If that's the case, allow me to put your mind at rest. Jules Verne knew absolutely nothing about the poles, and neither did his sources. They were all just speculating with very little information, none of it scientifically gathered. It's worth noting that at Verne's time a lot of people thought that each pole might have a giant hole that led to the hollow interior of the earth. (For more fiction on this possiblity, check out E.A. Poe's "MS Found in a Bottle" to say nothing of Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth.") The strucutre of the earth's atmosphere would not be fully understood until baloon explorations in the 20th Century. Currently, as to the idea that one place "had to be the coldest due to some physical law" is totally debunked. Larger areas are quite cold, and some are colder than others, but where is the coldest will vary from day to day and year to year, and since many factors play a role, you can easily find that a high altitude location in the subtropical Himalayas can be just as cold as any city in subpolar Siberia. 98.203.213.162 (talk) 23:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

"However"s
I think this arcticle has too many "however"s. Could someone make it look a bit more focused on the facts? Thanks in advance.--SangeYasha 23:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Units
Why are degrees Fahrenheit given first in this article? Given that they are Russian figures, wouldn't they have been measured in Celsius? That being so, surely the Celsius numbers should be given first; the only reason to put Fahrenheit first would be for numbers actually measured that way, such as US measurements. Loganberry (Talk) 11:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's also confusing, when I read the article, I was surprised that the NH was colder than Antarctica. But then I twigged the measurements were the wrong way round. Fixed.

Dras
The claim that Dras, Jammu/Kashmir, is the "world's coldest permanently inhabited place" outside Siberia is obviously false and should be removed - there are many places in Greenland, Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska etc. far colder than Dras. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.137.185.150 (talk) 00:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been to Dras. In winter. Windy, but not all that cold. In fact, I don't even think that Dras is the coldest place in India - since I'm pretty sure that Leh is much colder. The coldest recorded temperature for India is a balmy -33 C (-29 F) and it was recorded in the Ladakh. Now, technically Dras is in Baltistan, but administratively, that's part of the Ladakh region of J&K, being as it is on the east side of the Zojila Pass. So if I give them the benifit of a doubt, that temperature could have been recorded in Dras, but that is by no means a record for inhabited places. The Chinese city of Harbin averages -40 C in the winter, and most of northeast Asia dips that low in the winter. The best I can tell is that the source of this rumor is the Lonely Planet Book, which was probably publishing expatriate hearsay and tall tales, as usual.

One further note, not to split hairs, but the term "Outside of Siberia" is actually a misnomer. Unless we are using Siberia in its colloquial sense (referring to a table in a restaurant near the door to the kitchen?) the coldest premanently inhabited place, Oymyakon, is not even in Siberia. It's in the Sakha Republic, which is part of the Russian Far Eastern Federal District, which is actually East of Siberia, which is a real and specific place in Russia. Saying that Oymyakon is in Siberia would be like saying Yosemite is in Montana or the Grand Canyon is in Texas. 98.203.213.162 (talk) 23:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Northern Pole of Cold
One other ambiguous feature about this article is measurement methods and whether one could accept satellite data for a measurement. It would seem to me feasible that the center of the Greenland icecap could be colder than some places in Yukon or Siberia. 71.38.147.251 (talk) 18:32, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

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