How cold can the surface of our planet physically get? And what’s the coldest place on Earth? When you first wake up in the morning, it may feel like everything that exists outside of your blanket is as cold as cold gets.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the places with the objectively coldest temperatures on the planet. And we also got in touch with two scientists who’ve studied extreme cold temperatures.

Ted Scambos is a polar geophysicist based at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In an email exchange, he told us near-surface air temperature is “the temperature that a thermometer reads at 4.9 to 9.8 feet [1.5 to 3 meters] above the surface [of the Earth].”

“‘The reference height for formal measurements is 6 feet, 6 inches (2 meters) or so above the surface,” Scambos adds.

When you go higher or lower, the measured temperature at your location may change.

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