The coldest biomes on Earth are ice caps, tundra, and taiga (boreal forest), in that order. Ice cap regions hold the planet’s lowest recorded temperatures, dropping below −90°C (−130°F), while tundra and taiga endure long winters that regularly hit −40°C (−40°F). If you’re trying to rank biomes by temperature, these three stand apart from everything else.
Ice Caps: The Coldest Biome on Earth
Ice cap climates are essentially “summerless.” No month averages above freezing. These regions sit over the Antarctic ice sheet and interior Greenland, where permanent ice cover reflects sunlight and keeps temperatures brutally low year-round. At McMurdo Station in Antarctica, the average annual temperature is −17°C (1.4°F), and that’s considered one of the more accessible locations on the continent.
The true extremes are far worse. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center identified temperatures between −92 and −94°C (−134 to −137°F) along a 1,000-kilometer stretch of the East Antarctic ice divide. These readings came from small topographic hollows, just a few meters deep, sitting between the highest summits of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. That shattered the previous record of −89.2°C (−128.6°F) set at Russia’s Vostok Research Station in 1983. No other biome comes close to these numbers.
Almost nothing lives in ice cap regions. There’s no soil, no vegetation, and virtually no precipitation. Many parts of interior Antarctica receive less moisture annually than the Sahara Desert, technically making them polar deserts.
Tundra: Frozen for Most of the Year
Tundra is the coldest biome where plants actually grow, though “grow” is generous. Temperatures range from −40°C (−40°F) in winter to about 18°C (64°F) during brief summer peaks. Winters are long, dark, and below freezing for six to ten months of the year.
The defining feature is permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen ground beneath the surface. Only the top 50 centimeters or so (about 20 inches) thaws each summer, creating a thin active layer where shallow-rooted mosses, lichens, and low shrubs can survive. Below that, the upper one to two meters of permafrost may contain ancient ice structures that have remained frozen for decades or longer. This shallow thaw zone limits what can grow and keeps trees from establishing roots, which is why tundra landscapes look flat and open.
The growing season lasts only 50 to 60 days. Compare that to a temperate forest, where plants get roughly 180 frost-free days, and you can see why tundra vegetation stays small and close to the ground.
There are two types of tundra. Arctic tundra covers vast stretches of northern Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Alpine tundra exists at high elevations on mountains worldwide, above the tree line. Alpine tundra shares many of the same temperature extremes and short growing seasons, but it gets more sunlight per day and lacks the months-long polar darkness that defines the Arctic version.
Taiga: Cold Winters, Short Summers
The taiga, also called boreal forest, is the world’s largest land biome. It stretches across northern Russia, Canada, Scandinavia, and Alaska in a wide belt just south of the tundra. Winter temperatures drop to −40°C (−40°F), matching the tundra’s lows, but summers are warmer. Average summer temperatures hover around 10°C (50°F), and the season lasts long enough for coniferous trees like spruce, pine, and fir to thrive.
That tree growth is the key difference between taiga and tundra. Taiga winters are brutal, but the slightly longer warm season gives deep-rooted trees enough time to photosynthesize and survive. The soil thaws more deeply than in the tundra, though permafrost still exists in northern sections of the biome. Precipitation is modest, falling mostly as snow that insulates the ground through winter.
Why These Biomes Are So Cold
Three factors drive the extreme cold in these biomes: latitude, sunlight angle, and surface reflectivity. Ice caps and tundra sit near or at the poles, where the sun stays low on the horizon even in summer and disappears entirely for weeks or months in winter. The low sun angle means solar energy spreads over a larger area and passes through more atmosphere before reaching the ground, delivering far less warmth per square meter than at the equator.
Snow and ice make this worse by reflecting up to 80 or 90 percent of incoming sunlight back into space. Darker surfaces like forests and soil absorb heat, but tundra and ice caps stay white for most of the year, creating a feedback loop that keeps temperatures suppressed. The taiga’s dark coniferous canopy actually absorbs more heat than tundra, which partly explains why it stays warmer despite sitting at similar latitudes in some areas.
How Climate Change Is Shifting These Biomes
Cold biomes are warming faster than anywhere else on the planet. NOAA’s 2025 Arctic Report Card found that surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest on record since 1900. Autumn 2024 and winter 2025 ranked as the first and second warmest Arctic seasons ever recorded, respectively. In March 2025, Arctic winter sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record.
This warming is already reshaping biome boundaries. Shrubs are creeping into tundra regions that were previously too cold to support them, and the tree line between taiga and tundra is gradually shifting northward. Permafrost is thawing more deeply each summer, destabilizing ground that has been frozen for thousands of years and releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere. The biomes themselves aren’t disappearing overnight, but their edges are blurring in ways that would have been difficult to detect just a few decades ago.