While Europe and America baked through record heat this summer, the other end of the planet quietly dropped to minus 119 Fahrenheit — the coldest anywhere on Earth in fourteen years. The people who recorded it cannot be reached by plane until spring

The temperature came within about a degree of Concordia’s own all-time record — minus 120.5°F, logged in the winter of 2010. Inside, the temperature is kept around 20°C — a temperature differential of over 100 degrees Celsius across the wall of the building. The temperature range across which humans currently live, on the same planet, at the same moment, was approximately 124 degrees Celsius. More extreme low readings may still come — Antarctic temperatures usually bottom out in late August, just before the sun returns. Somewhere on the ice, at the end of the planet, thirteen people are quietly measuring the coldest temperatures that Earth still produces — and cannot leave until spring.