high performance gloves while maintaining dexterity

I currently live in Very Cold Land, in fact the same town as the authors of the paper fshgrl linked (it's -2F right now, with half a foot of snow on the ground) and I've explored my options in some depth. The issue, I've been told time and again, is that mittens keep your hand warmest but of course don't allow for any dexterity at all. The kind of mittens that bondcliff mentions, the convertible ones, are really not all that warm. I own a pair very similar to the one in the link and they're just not warm enough when it's really cold out (so, say, below ten degrees Fahrenheit the tips of your fingers are quite cold in those mittens). http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabelas-GORE-TEX174-Pinnacle-Mittens/726069.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=%2Fcatalog%2Fsearch.cmd%3Fform_state%3DsearchForm%26N%3D0%26fsch%3Dtrue%26Ntk%3DAllProducts%26Ntt%3D%2Bmittens%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&Ntt=+mittens (Cabela's GORE TEX Pinnacle Mittens) are what I'm thinking of getting for my next pair of mittens. They've got finger grooves for the tips of your fingers which make things slightly--though not profoundly--more dexterous and they're 150gram Thinsulate insulation. For more dexterity with a slight sacrifice in warmth, they also come in gloves (see http://www.cabelas.com/product/Clothing/Womens-Clothing/Womens-Outerwear/Womens-Winter-Accessories%7C/pc/104797080/c/104789880/sc/104480280/i/103915980/Cabelas-Kids-GORE-TEX174-Pinnacle-Gloves/945064.uts?destination=%2Fcatalog%2Fbrowse%2Fclothing-womens-clothing-womens-outerwear-womens-winter-accessories%2F_%2FN-1102483%2FNo-48%2FNs-CATEGORY_SEQ_103915980%3FWTz_stype%3DGNP). Overall, Cabela's has some gloves and mittens you may want to look at for a sense of the competition for the consumer market (not so much industrial). http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Thinsulate_Insulation/Homepage/AboutUs/WhatIsThinsulate/, http://www.gore-tex.com/remote/Satellite/content/fabric-technologies, http://www.gloves-online.com/proddetail.php?prod=WK-CGO-888, Columbia's new patented http://www.columbia.com/Omni-Heat/Science_Omni-Heat,default,pg.html [warning: auto play video], North Face's http://www2.thenorthface.com/aunz/technologies/technologies-OU4.html to a lesser extent...these are some current innovations that I can think of. I'm sorry I don't know too much about upcoming ones (competitive advantage and all that).

I wonder if you could introduce enough external heat around the wrist and palm that, by circulation, you could leave the fingers very thinly covered.

very interesting stuff. As a winter cyclist in Southern Ontario, I've experimented with quite a few different gloves, and have found the http://tinyurl.com/25r9kco (with gortex technology) to suit my needs the best. These keep me warm and dry in deep winter for long periods of cycling. I owned another pair from MEC a few years back that were even better, but I lost them and I believe they were discontinued. However, neither of the gloves offered sufficient dexterity for me to use my bike lock, or house keys. So I started wondering whether it would be possible to have a super thin gloves, like surgical gloves, that were constructed in such a way that they'd offer supreme insulation. After discussing the idea with my colleague, we bandied around a few ideas, such as creating a super thin vacuum layer (to prevent loss of heat due to conduction), and reflective linings (to prevent loss of heat due to radiation). The heated gloves seem like a useful approach, but I still fantasize about a time in our future where we can solve the problem without using external power.

http://www.glacieroutdoor.com/index.php company makes neoprene gloves for harsh conditions. I haven't tried them but have heard good things.

Next time I'll read all the comments first.

There was a Finnish sniper during the winter war who wore three pairs of gloves. One was a heavy pair of mittens for skiing. He wore another set of gloves under these for things like shooting. Under these he wore very finely woven knit wool gloves that were fine enough for his dexterity that he could reload in the extreme cold. I think his advantage was that he was the only person with enough dexterity to reload in the cold because he had the best gear. The point of the story is layering with really nice gloves closest to your hands.

http://www.metafilter.com/88696/The-White-Death#2924808 discusses the gloves used by Simo Häyhä, a Finnish WWII sniper. Main lesson seems to be to do as much as possible with your mittens on (make buttons larger, tool handles bigger, etc) and if you do need dexterity, keep your wrist's pulse point warm.

Argh, all the "C's in my post should be "F"s. Fahrenheit. My phone works fine at 10 Celsius.

http://www.twittens.ca/?