Nature Communications, September 14 Most of Svalbard’s glaciers and ice caps have lost the porous snow layer that previously protected them from yearly temperature fluctuations. This snow layer was lost below a critical altitude of 450 meters already in the 1980s, which rendered 60% of Svalbard’s ice highly vulnerable to further warming; starting a period […]
Journal of Geophysical Research, July 11 On the other side of the Arctic, an earlier study this summer found that winter storms and warm near‐surface Atlantic water appear directly responsible for winter sea ice loss in the Whalers Bay area north of Svalbard. The amount of heat transported from the Atlantic Ocean, and storm frequency both […]
While the Siberian heatwave drove large wildfires in July, other parts of the Arctic also saw record-breaking temperatures. On July 25, the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Norwegian High Arctic saw temperatures reach 21.7°C, breaking the previous record by 0.4°C; with daily temperatures exceeding 20°C for four days in a row. […]