The Poles of Cold are the places in the southern and northern hemispheres where the lowest air temperatures have been recorded. Southern hemisphere In the southern hemisphere, the Pole of Cold is currently located in Antarctica, at the Russian (formerly Soviet) Antarctic station Vostok at . On July 21, 1983, this station recorded a temperature of . This is the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded on Earth. Vostok station is located at the elevation of above sea level, far removed from the moderating influence of oceans (more than from the nearest sea coast), and high latitude that results in almost three months of civil polar night every year (early May to end of July), all combine to produce an environment where temperatures rarely rise above during summer and frequently fall below in winter. By comparison, the South Pole, due to its lower elevation, is, on average, warmer than Vostok, and the lowest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole is . It is generally thought that Vostok is not the coldest place in Antarctica, and there are locations (notably, Dome A) that are modestly colder on average. The now inactive Plateau Station, located on the central Antarctic plateau, recorded an average yearly temperature that was consistently lower than that of Vostok Station during the 37-month period that it was active in the late 1960s, with its average for the coldest month being several degrees lower than the same statistic for Vostok. Plateau Station never recorded a temperature that surpassed the record low set at Vostok. However, temperatures at Plateau Station were only recorded during the 37 months that it was active. Had a lower temperature than the Vostok record occurred there at a later date, it would never have been recorded. Monitoring stations in Antarctica are few and far between; prior to 1995, Vostok was the only research station on the Antarctic Plateau above the elevation of 3,000 m (with the exception of Plateau Station during the brief period that it was active in the 1960s), with no other stations for several hundred kilometers in any direction. Temperatures below , if they did occur elsewhere, would not have been recorded. The automatic weather station at Dome A was only installed in 2005, and has recorded as the coldest so far (2010). However a review of satellite measurements taken between 2010 and 2013 found several places located along a ridge