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The Coldest Town: Life in Siberia's Pole of Cold
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21250 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 2001 |
1,514 Words |
| Author
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Bryan Alexander
Bryan Alexander is a freelance photojournalist based in the
United Kingdom. |
Verkhoyansk, situated on the bank of the Yana River in the Russian republic of Yakutia, has the distinction of being the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere. If you work on the theory that the farther north you go from the equator the colder it gets, you would expect the North Pole to be the coldest place, but Verkhoyansk, which lies some 150 miles south, gets much colder. The town first made history on January 15, 1885, when the record-breaking temperature of --90.4*F was measured there, a record that still stands, though it has come close to being broken a few times. In 1996, for example, despite global warming, a temperature of --85*F was recorded. Though Verkhoyansk competes with another town in Yakutia, Oimyakon, for the dubious privilege of being the coldest town in the world, most climatologists agree that Verkhoyansk is the winner.
Coincidentally, the coldest place in the Southern Hemisphere (and the world) also happens to be in Russian territory. It is the top of a 12,000-foot-high ice dome near the Russian Antarctic station of Vostok, some six hundred miles north of the South Pole, where a temperature of --127*F was recorded, the lowest on earth.
The reason Verkhoyansk gets so much colder than the North Pole is that it lies in the middle of a very large landmass, which cools much more efficiently than does the Arctic Ocean. The Verkhoyansk region also experiences a temperature inversion, which makes low-lying areas considerably colder than the mountains. The air temperature at ground level can be almost ten degrees colder than the temperature at two meters. It also gets intensely hot in summer. In July 1998, a temperature of 104*F was recorded, giving Verkhoyansk a yearly temperature range of 194 degrees, the greatest
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