Elevated temperatures in the Arctic, which caused massive melting of the Greenland ice sheet during a three-day period in July, also have touched off rapid glacial melting in Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago.
Elevated temperatures in the Arctic, which caused massive melting of the Greenland ice sheet during a three-day period in July, also have touched off rapid glacial melting in Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago.
The island chain — which stretches between 74 and 81 degrees north latitude — experienced glacial melting that was 3.5 times higher than the average melting that occurred on Svalbard from 1981 to 2010. Since the start of summer, an estimated 44 billion tons of meltwater have flowed off Svalbard’s glaciers and into surrounding Arctic seas, according to Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at Belgium’s University of Liège. At its northernmost point, the Svalbard is roughly 600 miles from the North pole.
This summer’s melting on Svalbard was most severe from July 15 to July 17, the same period when extreme warming swept over Greenland and touched off major melting of the island’s ice sheet.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: Decokon via Pixabay
