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In the summer of 2024, Svalbard’s glaciers melted to record levels due to high temperatures, further strengthening the permanent heat dome over Scandinavia. This led to record-high temperatures
In the summer of 2024, Svalbard’s glaciers melted to record levels due to high temperatures, further strengthening the permanent heat dome over Scandinavia. This led to record-high temperatures and significant ice loss, causing concern among climatologists and environmentalists.
The glaciers of the Svalbard archipelago experienced extreme melting events caused by extremely high air temperatures in the summer of 2024.
Located between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole, Svalbard is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet. More than half of its land mass is covered in ice, which makes up about 6 percent of the planet’s glaciated area outside of Greenland and Antarctica.
In late July and early August 2024, temperatures in this part of the Arctic Circle were running about 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. The heat was sweeping through Svalbard, home to some of the world’s northernmost glaciers, causing snow and ice to melt rapidly.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured these images of Nordaustlandet, the second largest island in the archipelago, on August 9 as water and sediment flowed off the coast into the Arctic Ocean. The sediment likely causes spectacular swirls of color in the water surrounding the island. The melting of seasonal snow and the older, compacted snow cover called “firn” have exposed some glacial ice (light blue) and are revealed in the images.
On July 23, 2024, Svalbard’s glaciers broke an all-time record for daily surface melt, according to Xavier Fettweiss, a climate scientist at the University of Liège. On that day, Svalbard discharged the equivalent of about 55 millimeters of water, five times the normal amount.
The exceptional melting continued into August, coinciding with a persistent heat dome that scorched parts of the Nordic Arctic. Svalbard’s capital, Longyearbyen, on the main island of Svalbard, reached its warmest August temperature on record, 20.2°C (68°F), on August 11, about 2.2°C (4°F) above the previous monthly record, according to data from meteorologist Daan van den Broek.
Svalbard experienced its hottest summer on record in 2023, according to the Copernicus State of the Climate report. The report cited several factors contributing to the warming, including below-average sea ice and above-average sea surface temperatures.
Source: Port Altele
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