By Klaus Döring
Strange days have reached Ny-Alesund, Europe’s most northerly research station. Perched at the very edge of the continent, in Svalbard, Norway, a mere 1,000km from the North Pole, the center’s international scientists have been experiencing weather that is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
The archipelago was balmy and calm at the end of January, when it should still have been gripped by ice and screaming winds. In May 2024, Vigdis Tverberg of the Norwegian Polar Institute, reported that waters in the Kongsfjorden — the long strip of water that pokes eastwards into mainland Svalbard at Ny-Alesund — were now 2o C warmer than they used to be a few years ago.
Two degrees may seem a modest rise, but the effects are profound, as Tverberg stressed: “Normally, the temperature in the fjord would be close to freezing. This winter the cooling of the water has probably never been close enough to produce an ice cover.”
I loved to stay in Norway many times and can’t believe today’s news.
Thus a major strip of water, on a latitude parallel to the northernmost tip of Greenland, failed to produce a covering of ice this year. The inference is clear, say researchers. Global warming, driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is not only increasing air temperatures, it is causing the oceans to warm alarmingly.
Neither is Kongsfjorden unique. According to Tverberg’s colleague, Sebastian Gerland, all the other fjords on this normally ice-locked coastline have remained open, thanks to the startling warming of their waters. Polar ice is not so much dwindling, as scientists once suggested might happen, it is disappearing before our eyes.
The implications are deeply worrying, as Graham Shimmield, director of the Dunstaffnage Marine laboratory, in Scotland, points out. His researchers have just finished a survey of Kongsfjorden in a bid to find out the effects of climate change on its marine life.
“There is a very carefully delineated food chain in the Arctic,” he said. “Plankton are eaten by fish, which are eaten by seals, which are eaten by polar bears. It has been a very stable supply for a long time. Now the whole chain is changing and we have no idea what the consequences will be. For the polar bear, which is already suffering because it has less pack ice to hunt on, the problem is particularly worrying.”
The likely impact on wildlife is clearly disturbing. But the issues go far beyond concerns for polar creatures. They sound an alarm bell for the entire planet.
For years, scientists have stressed the Arctic and the Antarctic are the most climatically sensitive parts of our planet. Global warming was always going to hit the poles with disproportionate severity, they said. Now those predictions are being proved correct, not just in the warming polar waters.
Limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100.
Review each country’s contribution to cutting emissions every five years so they scale up to the challenge
Enable rich countries to help poorer nations by providing “climate finance” to adapt to climate change and switch to renewable energy.
The bad news doesn’t stop here, however. There is the issue of the melting of the planet’s permafrost, the thick layer of frozen soil covering much of the ground in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
We are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing and start solving them. We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most part we just need the political will to apply solutions already available.
Mother Earth and your environment – quo vadis?
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