South Pole
In midsummer, as the sun reaches its maximum elevation of about 23.5 degrees, high temperatures at the South Pole in January average at . As the six-month "day" wears on and the sun gets lower, temperatures drop as well: they reach around sunset (late March) and sunrise (late September). In midwinter, the average temperature remains steady at around . The highest temperature ever recorded at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station was on Christmas Day, 2011, and the lowest was on June 23, 1982 (for comparison, the lowest temperature directly recorded anywhere on earth was at Vostok Station on July 21, 1983, though was measured indirectly by satellite in East Antarctica between Dome A and Dome F in August 2010). Mean annual temperature at the South Pole is -49.3 °C (-56.7 °F).
Ice cap climate
An ice cap climate is a polar climate where no mean monthly temperature exceeds . The climate covers areas in or near the polar regions, such as Antarctica and Greenland, as well as the highest mountaintops. Such areas are covered by a permanent layer of ice and have no vegetation, but they may have animal life, that usually feeds from the oceans. Ice cap climates are inhospitable to human life. Antarctica, the coldest continent on Earth, sustains no permanent human residents, but has some civil inhabitants in proximity to research stations in coastal settlements that are maritime polar and there are some communities that are situated in a transitional zone between the two climates, but barely qualify as a tundra. Some places like Antarctica had a different climate before having an ice cap climate.