Product Code Database
Verkhoyansk (p=vʲɪrxɐˈjansk; ) is a town in Verkhoyansky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the Yana River in the Arctic Circle, from Batagay, the administrative center of the district, and north of Yakutsk, the capital city of the Sakha republic. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,311. Verkhoyansk holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle, with , and it also holds the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Asia, . The cold record is shared with Oymyakon.
Verkhoyansk is one of the places considered the northern Pole of Cold, the other being Oymyakon, located 629 km (391 miles) away. The lowest recorded temperature was , recorded on January 15, 1885, and both February 5 and 7, 1892.
In this area, temperature inversions consistently form in winter due to the extremely cold and dense air of the Siberian High pooling in deep hollows, so that temperatures increase rather than decrease with higher altitude. In Verkhoyansk it sometimes happens that the average minimum temperatures for January, February, and December are below .
In its short summer, daytime temperatures over are not uncommon. The average annual temperature for Verkhoyansk is . On 20 June 2020 Verkhoyansk recorded a temperature of , yielding a temperature range of based on reliable records, making it the largest temperature range in the world. It was also the highest temperature above the Arctic Circle ever recorded. Only a handful of towns in Siberia and Canada have temperature ranges of or more, and Verkhoyansk is the only place on earth with a temperature range of or higher. Verkhoyansk has never recorded a temperature above freezing between November 10 and March 14. Daily records on the right of the page; December–March records can be accessed via buttons at the bottom of the page.
Verkhoyansk has an extreme latitude temperature anomaly when compared with Røst off the coastline of Norway. Both settlements are on 67°N and almost on the same latitudal decimal. In spite of this, Røst is on average more than milder during winter. In summer and particularly during July, on the other hand, Verkhoyansk is significantly warmer than its Norwegian counterpart.
Verkhoyansk has a dry climate with little rainfall or snowfall; the average annual precipitation is . Although no month can be described as truly wet, there are strong seasonal differences in precipitation, with the summer being much wetter than the winter; because the driest month (April) is in the "summer" and has less than one-third the precipitation of the wettest "winter" month (October), Verkhoyansk's climate technically qualifies as Köppen Dsd, a classification found only in parts of eastern Siberia. The dryness experienced in winter is largely due to the dominance of high pressure at this time of year.
Finally, Verkhoyansk has very low seasonal lag, with December being colder than February, and June warmer than August. This is similar to Patagonia in the Southern Hemisphere, where June is the coldest month in many areas.
/ref> On 6 February 1933 however, the temperature at Oymyakon reached , just barely above Verkhoyansk's record. Only Greenland and Antarctica have recorded lower temperatures than Oymyakon or Verkhoyansk: the lowest directly recorded temperature at ground level is , recorded at the Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983, and a temperature of was recorded via satellite observations at the East Antarctic Plateau in Antarctica on 10 August 2010. The World Meteorological Organization has recently recognized a temperature of measured in Greenland on 22 December 1991 as the lowest in the Northern Hemisphere. The record was measured at an automatic weather station and was uncovered after nearly 30 years.WMO verifies -69.6°C Greenland temperature as Northern hemisphere record
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Press Release Number: 23092020; WMO, 23 September 2020.
Notes
Sources
|
|
