Longyearbyen airport had an average temperature of 6.1°C, which is 2.5°C above normal. Global air and sea surface temperatures were also at record levels.
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.
When glaciologist Jack Kohler returned to Austre Brøggerbreen in Svalbard, he was shocked. More than three meters of the ice at the glacier front had melted away. That's a record. And an ice tunnel had become a trench.
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 glacier over Mine 7 in Adventdalen on Svalbard is thawing in the summer heat. This has resulted in a severe flood with thousands of liters of water.
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.
Greenhouse gas emissions provide extreme warming on Svalbard.
Observations From Members 