Coldest cloud tops

At 13:38 UTC on 29 December 2018, a NOAA/NASA meteorological satellite recorded an infrared temperature of 161.96 K (-111.19°C; -168.14°F) as part of a storm cluster in the tropical West Pacific, around 400 km (250 mi) south of Nauru. The tops of the clouds during the event had reached a stratospheric altitude, more than 20.5 km (12.7 mi) above sea level. The findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on 22 March 2021.

These high-elevation clouds are known as "overshooting tops" (OTs) and occur fairly commonly during severe storms. They are caused by intense updraught events and result in protrusions above the upper region of a storm cloud (known as the anvil) that can reach up to the lower stratosphere; temperatures are much cooler here than in the troposphere below, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere where storms normally top out.

The record-setting temperature was detected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the polar-orbiting NOAA-20 satellite.

This cold storm cloud exceeds the previous record of -109.35°C (-164.83°F) recorded on 30 November 2019 - also by NOAA-20 - as part of a Category 1 storm system in the west Pacific that went on to form Typhoon Kammuri.

The study was conducted by meteorologists Simon Proud (UK) of the University of Oxford, UK, and the National Centre for Earth Observation, and Scott Bachmeier (USA) of ‎the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.