Coldest Deserts in the World: How They Are Measured and Ranked

The coldest desert in the world is the Antarctic Desert, where Russia's Vostok Station recorded −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) on 21 July 1983, the lowest air temperature ever measured on Earth. Second is the Arctic Desert, whose coldest reading, −69.6 °C, came from an automatic weather station on the Greenland ice sheet in December 1991. Third is Antarctica's ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys, where Lake Vida has recorded −65.7 °C. Outside the polar regions the coldest is the Great Basin Desert of the United States, at −38.3 °C, just ahead of the Gobi at −37.2 °C. Those rankings depend entirely on how "coldest" is measured, so this guide starts with the yardstick before giving the list.

What "Coldest Desert" Counts: Under 250 mm of Rain, Then the Thermometer

A desert is defined by dryness, not heat. Most geographers follow the system Peveril Meigs set out in 1961, in which arid land receives less than 250 mm (about 10 in) of precipitation a year. Cold is a separate test. The Köppen climate classification splits deserts at a mean annual temperature of 18 °C: below it, a desert is a cold desert (BWk), above it a hot desert (BWh). The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland fall under a third type, the polar ice-cap climate (EF), and are usually called polar deserts because their snowfall is so light.

That gives a list of candidates, but not an order. To rank them, this article uses one measure: the lowest air temperature reliably recorded at a weather station in each desert, taken from the World Meteorological Organization's archive for the polar records and from national weather services as compiled on Wikipedia (2026) for the rest. Each desert is represented by one named station with a published record, usually its best-known town, and air readings are used rather than surface readings. That is a choice, not a census: a colder reading may exist somewhere else in the same desert, which matters most for the order of the cold-winter deserts in the lower half.

Rival Yardsticks: Satellite Ice at −98 °C and Station Choice

Three other yardsticks would reorder the ranking. The first is satellite data. On 10 August 2010 satellites measured a surface temperature of −92 °C on a ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji in East Antarctica, at about 3,900 m, and later work found many spots on the high plateau where the snow surface falls to around −98 °C. These are not official records, because they measure the ice itself rather than the air 1.5 m above it, but they suggest near-surface air of about −94 °C, colder than Vostok's figure.

The second is the average rather than the extreme. In the McMurdo Dry Valleys, mean annual air temperature ranges from −14.7 °C at Lake Bonney to −29.6 °C at Lake Vida, a reminder that one valley floor can differ from the next by 15 degrees. A ranking by yearly average would put the polar deserts even further ahead, since most cold-winter deserts are hot in summer.

The third is station choice, and Patagonia shows the problem clearly. The Sarmiento climate table gives −32.8 °C, the Patagonian Desert article cites an official record of −33.9 °C somewhere in Chubut province, and Argentina's national list gives −30.0 °C at Alto Río Senguer in 2001. The sources do not agree, so the table uses the station figure that can be traced to a named place. For the full record books, see our list of the coldest temperatures ever recorded on Earth.

Vostok, Klinck and Lake Vida: the Three Polar Deserts at the Top

1. Antarctic Desert, −89.2 °C. At about 14.2 million km², the Antarctic Desert is also the largest desert on Earth, bigger than the Sahara. Vostok Station, which the Soviet Union opened in 1957 and Russia now runs, sits 3,488 m above sea level in the middle of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, about 1,301 km from the South Pole. Height, latitude and months of winter darkness combine there: Vostok set a world record of −88.3 °C in 1968, then broke it with −89.2 °C in 1983, which remains the lowest temperature ever measured directly on the ground. The station holds about 30 people in summer and 15 in winter.

2. Arctic Desert, −69.6 °C. The Arctic Desert covers about 13.9 million km² across the far north of America, Europe and Asia, including the Greenland ice sheet. For decades the Northern Hemisphere record was claimed by the Siberian towns of Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, at −67.8 °C. In 2020 the WMO accepted an older reading instead: −69.6 °C on 22 December 1991 at the Klinck automatic weather station, at 3,105 m near the top of the Greenland ice sheet. It is now the official low for the Northern and Western Hemispheres. Nearby Summit Station, at 3,216 m, holds a summer record of its own: −33 °C in early July 2017, the lowest July temperature recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.

3. McMurdo Dry Valleys, −65.7 °C. These largely snow-free valleys in Victoria Land are the largest ice-free region in Antarctica. The Transantarctic Mountains, rising to about 3,000 m, create a snow shadow, and katabatic winds strip away what little snow arrives, about 100 mm a year as water equivalent over a century of records. The lowest valley temperature, −65.7 °C, was measured at Lake Vida, where the permanent lake ice is at least 21 m thick, the thickest non-glacial ice known. Beneath it, brine seven times saltier than seawater stays liquid at about −13 °C. Our guide to the Antarctic Dry Valleys covers the valleys themselves.

From the Great Basin to the Taklamakan: the Cold-Winter Deserts

Below the polar trio the numbers jump by almost 30 degrees. The remaining seven are the cold-winter deserts, which owe their cold to some combination of high elevation, high latitude and distance from the sea, and all of them can be hot in summer.

Great Basin, Gobi and Ladakh

4. Great Basin Desert, −38.3 °C. The Great Basin Desert covers about 492,000 km², mostly in Nevada and Utah and reaching into eastern California, and it is the coldest of North America's deserts. It is a rain-shadow desert: the Sierra Nevada strips moisture from Pacific storms, leaving about 230 mm a year in the west and 300 mm in the east. Winnemucca, the seat of Humboldt County, Nevada, recorded −37 °F (−38.3 °C) on 22 December 1990. No water drains out to either ocean, which is how the basin got its name.

5. Gobi Desert, −37.2 °C. The Gobi spreads over about 1.3 million km² of southern Mongolia and northern China, the sixth-largest desert in the world, on a plateau roughly 910 to 1,520 m above sea level. Winter winds can drive temperatures to about −40 °C, while summer highs reach 45 °C. Sainshand, capital of Dornogovi Province in the eastern Gobi on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, has recorded −37.2 °C in January. More on the region is in our Gobi Desert geography guide.

6. Ladakh, −34.0 °C. Ladakh is a high-altitude desert administered by India as a union territory. It is part of the wider Kashmir region, disputed between India and Pakistan, and between India and China. Sitting in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, it gets so little precipitation that vegetation is scarce across most of it. Winter minimums run from −20 to −35 °C. The lowest official reading, −34.0 °C, was taken at Durbuk, a town between the Chang La pass and Tangtse on the road to Pangong Lake, on 17 February 2010.

Qaidam, Patagonia, Karakum and Taklamakan

7. Qaidam Basin, −33.6 °C. The Qaidam in Qinghai Province is a hyperarid basin of about 120,000 km² sitting at around 3,000 m on the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. It averages only 26 mm of rain a year, against evaporation of more than 3,000 mm, so its lakes have turned saline or dried out. Golmud, the basin's main city, has recorded −33.6 °C in January.

8. Patagonian Desert, −32.8 °C. Covering about 673,000 km², mostly in Argentina with areas of Chile, the Patagonian Desert is the largest desert in Argentina and the eighth-largest in the world. The Andes block Pacific rain to the west. Inland plateaus average around 0 °C in winter, and cold waves bring −20 to −25 °C. Sarmiento, founded as a colony of mainly Welsh immigrants between Lake Musters and Lake Colhue Huapi, recorded −32.8 °C on 1 June 1907, cited as the coldest low-elevation reading in South America.

9. Karakum Desert, −25.4 °C. The Karakum covers about 350,000 km², roughly 70% of Turkmenistan. It is famous for summer heat, yet it is classed as a cold-winter desert: Türkmenabat, on the Amu Darya at its eastern edge, has fallen to −25.4 °C in January, and Turkmenistan's national low of −36 °C was recorded in the Daşoguz Region to the north.

10. Taklamakan Desert, −21.0 °C. The Taklamakan fills about 337,000 km² of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. Hotan, an oasis city on its southern edge below the Kunlun Mountains, has recorded −21.0 °C. In the 2008 Chinese winter storms the whole desert was reported covered in snow for the first time on record, up to 4 cm deep, with −26.1 °C at some observatories. Those unnamed readings are colder than the Karakum's −25.4 °C at Türkmenabat, a clear example of how much the order at the bottom of this table depends on which station is chosen.

The cold-winter deserts are often the same places that bake in July, which is why the Karakum also appears in our ranking of the hottest deserts in the world.