The mercury has plunged to a 20-year low in Siberia, with the far-northern town of Zhilinda recording a bone-rattling minus-62.1° Celsius, reports said.

The January 10 temperature in Zhilinda, home to less than 1,000 people, is the lowest recorded in two decades.

The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth is a jaw-dropping minus-89.2° Celsius recorded on July 21, 1983, in Vostok, Antarctica.

The extreme cold presented a contradictory picture for a world battling global warming due to a human-induced climate crisis.

The World Economic Forum has estimated that the North and South Poles experienced unprecedented heatwaves in 2022 - temperatures were up to 40° Celsius above the seasonal average.

The extreme cold is expected to focus over the eastern half of Russia over the next few days, gradually shifting eastward through the weekend. 

Such cold has become uncommon in recent decades because of human-caused climate change. Global warming decreases the frequency and intensity of cold air outbreaks, but it does not eliminate them.