The Siberian village of Oymyakon is regarded as the coldest permanently-inhabited place on earth.

Though it is only a few degrees of latitude further north than Aberdeen, the village of 500 residents is in a mountain valley where cool air pools, isolated from warmer currents by the “Siberian high” pressure system and the Chersky range.

Yet even here, the effects of global warming are already being felt.

There are no walruses tumbling to their deaths like in David Attenborough's new Our Planet series. (That was in the neighbouring Chukotka region.) But as the permafrost soil thaws in this region, thousands of people have had to move to new housing, forests are burning more often and animals face new predators and diseases.

When I arrived after a bumpy 26-hour journey on the gravel “road of bones” - which is built over the remains of gulag labourers - it was -22C in Oymyakon. Locals described this as “warm” as they took me for a bracing dip at a place where an underground stream prevents the river from freezing.

The next morning it was a more respectable -45C, cold enough to make a cup of hot water freeze instantly when we threw it into the air. Yet it was still far from the record of -68C recorded in the “Pole of Cold” in 1933.