Longyearbyen

The article reports extremely low sea ice measurements in the Arctic for January, with notable figures from both the Arctic and Southern Hemisphere.

“Last year we got several reports from tourists and scientists that they saw around six walruses dead here on the west side of Svalbard. Unfortunately, we couldn’t sample them as the dead walruses drifted away by the time we got to the place. But it’s not normal to get so many reported dead walruses in such a small area," said Christian Lydersen, senior scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. Now samples (collected by a Station Manager in July 2023) have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza.

There have been similar, even larger outbreaks of avian flue in seabird colonies in north Norway. In some cases, the losses were dramatic and major fractions of the colonies were wiped out. In Spitsbergen, avian flu was found for the first time in 2002, but the recent outbreak on Hopen is the largest one so far.

Temperature records are becoming the new normal for summers on Svalbard, the Arctic archipelago halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Summer 2022 saw the average even higher, with 7.4 degrees C for June, July and August at the airport a few kilometers west of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on the archipelago.

A French woman is hospitalized and a polar bear is dead after the bear attacked the woman on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago Svalbard Monday morning. The woman, who was wounded in the arm by the attacking polar bear, was one of 25 people staying at a tent camp in Nordfjorden on the northern shores of Isfjorden.

Rare footage shot by a researcher expedition in Norway shows a polar bear hunting and catching a swimming adult reindeer. The video, captured by Mateusz Gruszka, a cook for an expedition of Polish researchers in August 2021 on the Svalbard archipelago, shows the bear catching the reindeer and drowning it before dragging it ashore.

Global climate warming is most severe in the Arctic. One consequence is a widespread reduction in permafrost. Continuous, stable permafrost can act as a physical glue that helps anchor unstable slopes. Increasingly, scientists are reporting collapse of rock slopes in the High Arctic.

At Longyearbyen airport, the peak temperature reached 9.2 °C for a short period, nearly two degrees warmer than the last November record measured in 1975.

Glaciers are melting, permafrost thaws and buildings are sagging. What scares the scientists most is studies of decomposing carbon from beneath the ground being emitted to the atmosphere as CO2 or methane.

The man, identified as 38-year-old Dutch citizen was attacked in his tent before dawn and died shortly afterwards of his injuries. Svalbard officials say there were seven people on the site at the time and they are being looked after by health services.

After days with record heat at Svalbard, the penetration of water from the above melting glacier is now flooding Norway’s only operating coal mine that supplies the country’s only coal-power plant.

It was hotter today on Svalbard than in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. So much so, that the previous temperature record from 1979 was smashed.

Staff from the governor's office responded and found two bulls entangled on the shore. One lay dead in the water, and another could not move. A third bull had managed to get loose.

A satellite-tracked Arctic fox stunned researchers by making a 3,500-kilometer trek across Arctic sea ice and glacier to travel from the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to Canada’s Ellesmere Island in about two and a half months. “We first did not believe it was true,” rone of the researchers, Eva Fuglei, said about the amazing run

Seals and whales in the Arctic are shifting their feeding patterns as climate change alters their habitats, and the way they do so may determine whether they survive, a new study has found.

Greenhouse gas emissions provide extreme warming on Svalbard.

People in Longyearbyen have replaced parkas with a shell jacket. They must calculate with rainfall in January and February. Both snowmobiles and dogs must be parked. People are annoyed and disappointed. Others are very concerned.

From Longyearbyen to Kiribati, Bangladesh and California. Author Teresa Grøtan has collected young people's everyday life with climate change in the book "Before the Island Sink."

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrates its first decade in operation by accepting its millionth sample—and a grant for work to keep those samples safe despite melting permafrost.

Researchers say the concentration of plastic waste in the European Arctic is now comparable or even higher than in more urban and populated areas.