Warming Arctic – July 24, 2019

Warming Arctic – July 24, 2019

I’ve been aboard the Polar Pioneer ship, circumnavigating the Svalbard archipelago, close to the North Pole with Aurora Expeditions this last week. Svalbard is built on permanently frozen ground called permafrost. For years, it has provided a base as hard as concrete. But recent climate change is melting it, leading to destabilization of the soils and the infrastructure built upon them.

The Arctic is experiencing accelerated warming. The main town of Svalbard, Longyearbyen, is warming faster than any other town on Earth (temperatures have risen more than three times the global average). Why? As rising temperatures melt the polar snow and ice, less sunlight gets reflected. Darker surfaces (like land and water) absorb more of the solar energy, thus warming even faster.