With remote-sensing satellites, scientists have found the coldest places on Earth, just off a ridge in the East Antarctic Plateau. The coldest of the cold temperatures dropped to minus 135.8 F (minus 93.2 C) -- several degrees colder than the previous record. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO — Where is the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth? 
 
 "It's in Antarctica of course," Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said here today (Dec. 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. 
 
 That temperature? A mind- — and body-numbing — minus 136 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 93.2 Celsius), measured in pockets scattered near a high ice ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the East Antarctic Plateau. 
 
 The temperature measurement came from the most detailed global surface-temperature maps made to date, which were created using data from the new Landsat 8 satellite, launched in February, and 32 years' worth of data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and instruments aboard several other satellites. 
 
 Researchers began looking at these frigid pockets after they noticed cracks in the snow between large snow dunes on the plateau and wondered if super low temperatures might be creating the cracks by causing the snow on the surface to shrink. This led them to begin the search for the coldest places on the planet. [In Photos: The Coldest Places on Earth] 
 
 Cold, colder, coldest 
 
 They turned to the temperature records from the satellites, whose instruments measure the thermal radiation emitted at Earth's surface. The coldest temperature they found occurred on Aug. 10, 2010 (winter in the Southern Hemisphere). The temperature is essentially the same "as if you were to take your hand and put it on the surface of the snow. I don't recommend that, as, in this case, that would be colder than dry ice," Scambos said. It's "50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska, or Siberia," he added. 
 
 The temperatures in these pockets are able to drop so very, very low thanks to a combination of circumstances. Scambos and his colleagues think the stage is set for these record lows when clear skies above the domes cause the air to get colder as it radiates heat away to space. As the air near the Earth's surface gets colder, it also gets denser, and begins sliding down the dome, until it encounters one of these pockets, where it can become stuck. As it sits there possibly over several days, the air keeps radiating away heat and becomes colder and colder, until it reaches the record lows observed by the satellites. 
 
 The researchers think the air gets stuck on its way down the dome and toward the coast of the continent when atmospheric patterns conspire to "try to push the air back uphill," Scambos said. 
 
 Interestingly, the coldest temperatures measured in these pockets were all within a degree or two of each other, suggesting a potential floor to just how low the temperature can go. 
 
 "It's surprising that all of those places would have so similar a record," Scambos said. 
 
 The similarity could be explained in a few ways, he said: Thin clouds that form in the Earth's stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above the one humans live in and in which most weather occurs) could be limiting how much heat the air is able to radiate away into space. Or it could be that the weather systems that block the air only last for so long, among other possibilities. [Video: Coldest Place on Earth Found] 
 
 Scambos and his team are planning to use Landsat 8's capabilities to examine the surface with a higher resolution than previous satellites to better understand the cold pockets and to nail down more accurately the exact temperatures reached in them. 
 
 No official record 
 
 The temperatures won't make it into the official record books though, since the World Meteorological Organization recognizes only temperatures made a couple of meters above the surface. The long-standing record for the coldest temperature by that measure was, of course, also in Antarctica, at the Vostok Research Station, where it reached minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C) in July 1983. 
 
 However, Scambos is certain that if one could measure the air temperature at the proper height in these cold pockets — which would be hard because a mercury thermometer wouldn't work in such extremes, and an alcohol thermometer would be hard pressed — that they'd have Vostok beat. 
 
 "I'm confident the pockets are the coldest places on Earth," Scambos said. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't pretty sure we were colder than Vostok." 
 
 Follow Andrea Thompson @AndreaTOAP, Pinterest and Google+. Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. ||||| Image caption Antarctica's dry and clear conditions allow heat to be radiated very efficiently out into space 
 
 The coldest place on Earth has been measured by satellite to be a bitter minus 93.2 Celsius (-135.8F). 
 
 As one might expect, it is in the heart of Antarctica, and was recorded on 10 August, 2010. 
 
 Researchers say it is a preliminary figure, and, as they refine data from various space-borne thermal sensors, it is quite likely they will determine an even colder figure by a degree or so. 
 
 The current record low of minus 89.2C was also measured in Antarctica. 
 
 This occurred at the nearby Russian Vostok base on 21 July, 1983. 
 
 It should be stated this was an air temperature taken a couple of metres above the surface, and, as such, receives the recognition of the World Meteorological Organization as the official coldest place on the planet. 
 
 The new satellite figure, on the other hand, is the "skin" temperature of the ice surface itself - what you would feel if you put your hand on it. But the corresponding air temperature would almost certainly have beaten the Vostok mark. 
 
 "These very low temperatures are hard to imagine, I know," said Ted Scambos from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ted Scambos: "It is sort of otherworldly" 
 
 "The way I like to put it is that it's almost as cold below freezing as boiling water is above freezing. The new low is a good 50 degrees colder than temperatures in Alaska or Siberia, and about 30 degrees colder than the summit of Greenland. 
 
 "It makes the cold snap being experienced in some places in North America right now seem very tame by comparison," he told BBC News. 
 
 Dr Scambos was speaking here in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth scientists. 
 
 He and colleagues have been examining the data records from polar orbiting satellites stretching back some 30 years. 
 
 They find the coldest moments in Antarctica occur in the dark winter months at high elevations, where the extremely dry and clear air allows heat to be radiated very efficiently out into space. 
 
 It is evident that many super-cold spots are "strung out like pearls" along the ridges that link the high points, or domes, in the interior of the continent. 
 
 They are not quite at the ridge crests, but set slightly back down the slope. 
 
 "Air chilled near the surface flows downhill because it's denser; and it flows into these very shallow topographic pockets," explained Dr Scambos. 
 
 "If you were standing in one of these places, you'd hardly notice you were in a topographic low - it's that gentle and that shallow. But it's enough to trap this air. 
 
 "And once in those pockets, the air can cool still further and get down this extra three or four degrees below the previous record air temperature in Vostok." 
 
 The cold pockets run in a line for hundreds of kilometres between Dome Argus (Dome A) and Dome Fuji (Dome F). They all achieve more or less the same low temperature between minus 92C and minus 94C. The minus 93.2C figure is the temperature event in which the team has most confidence. It was recorded at a latitude of 81.8 degrees South and a longitude of 59.3 degrees East, at an elevation of about 3,900m. 
 
 Hottest place 
 
 One of the spacecraft instruments being used in the study is the Thermal Infrared Sensor on the recently launched Landsat-8. 
 
 It has very high resolution, but because it is so new the team says more time is needed to fully calibrate and understand its data. 
 
 "I'd caution Guinness not to take this result and put it in their world record book just yet, because I think the numbers will probably adjust over the coming year," Dr Scambos told BBC News. "However, I'm now confident we know where the coldest places on Earth are, and why they are there." 
 
 The intention at some point is to get some meteorological equipment into the cold pockets to measure the corresponding air temperature just above the surface. When that happens, Dr Scambos believes, Vostok will lose its official coldest title. 
 
 By way of comparison, the hottest recorded skin temperature on Earth - again by satellite sensor - is the Dasht-e Lut salt desert in southeast Iran, where it reached 70.7C in 2005. 
 
 The coldest place in the Solar System will likely be in some dark crater on a planetary body with no appreciable atmosphere. On Earth's Moon, temperatures of minus 238C have been detected. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC Weather presenter Peter Gibbs explains how he found life living in Antarctica for two years 
 
 Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
– If you're reading this in a spot just below the crest of an ice ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau, you're probably frozen solid by now. Researchers using satellite data say the area is the coldest place on Earth, with a record low of -136 Fahrenheit (-93.2 Celsius) recorded, a "soul-crushing" low colder than the -128.6 F (-89.2 C) recorded at Antarctica's Vostok Research Station in 1983, LiveScience reports. The temperature was recorded on Aug. 10, 2010—during the Southern Hemisphere's winter. "These very low temperatures are hard to imagine, I know," a researcher from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center tells the BBC. "The way I like to put it is that it's almost as cold below freezing as boiling water is above freezing. The new low is a good 50 degrees colder than temperatures in Alaska or Siberia, and about 30 degrees colder than the summit of Greenland." Researchers say chilled air flowing into topographic lows creates a string of super-cold spots along the Antarctic ridge—all with very similar temperatures, suggesting it is about as low as temperatures on our planet can get. Though the number could get a degree or two colder; the BBC explains -136 F is a preliminary number that could be adjusted as researchers "refine" the data pulled from the satellites' thermal sensors. (Another amazing satellite find: a new highest peak in Southeast Asia.)