Glaciers in Arctic Svalbard experienced unprecedented melting during summer 2024, contributing to global sea-level rise. Credit: Thomas V Schuler.
New research shows the summer of 2024 was a “record-breaking” melt season in Svalbard, raising concerns about the scale of future glacial ice melts under climate change.
The loss of glacial ice in the Norwegian archipelago is predicted to have significant impacts on the local and global environment possibly leading to rising sea levels and impacting the ocean currents.
Svalbard experienced extraordinarily high temperatures last summer. The researchers found that the sea surface temperatures of the surrounding areas in the Barents and Norwegian Seas were 3.5 to 5°C above the 1991–2020 baseline.
“Combining in situ observations, remote sensing, and modelling, we quantify the mass loss of all glaciers on Svalbard during the record-warm summer of 2024, that by far exceeds previous levels,” write the authors.
“The summer of 2024 on Svalbard thus provided a window into Arctic glacier meltdown in a warmer future.”
The analysis shows that the summer glacial melt in Svalbard in 2024 resulted in around 61.7 gigatons of ice melting. This is 1% of Svalbard total ice mass.
This loss contributed to approximately 0.16mm of water to global sea level rise although, when considering the melting of nearby areas too, this figure jumps to 0.27mm.
“Affecting global sea-level rise, mass loss from Arctic glaciers has implications far beyond their geographical location,” write the authors.
“By injecting buoyant freshwater, meltwater runoff from land to the ocean has far-reaching implications for ocean circulation near shore and in fjords and fuels a variety of ecological communities across a wide range of the food chain.”
Svalbard is home to 6% of the world’s glacier area outside of Greenland and Antarctica. If the all the glaciers on Svalbard were to melt, scientists predict this would account for a 1.7cm sea level rise.
The research team found much of the melting occurred within a 6-week period. Across this time, the atmospheric conditions were warmer than usual, and the area was experiencing a marine heatwave.
Under current climate conditions, these temperatures are extremely rare however, some climate models suggest that these levels may become more common by the end of the 21st century.
“We find that temperature levels as in 2024 represent a rare situation for contemporary climate conditions but will be frequently reached in a few decades,” write the authors.
“This suggests further that the summer of 2024 may represent the normal situation in 2100, and the observed mass loss of glaciers in 2024 indeed provides a view into future glacier meltdown in Svalbard and probably other parts of the Arctic.”
Just last year, a NASA study found that the Greenland Icesheet lost more ice than previously estimated with 179 of the 207 glaciers in focus having retreated significantly since 1985.
According to the World Meteorological Organisation, 5 of the past 6 years have seen the most glacier retreat in human record, with 2022–2024 claiming the largest 3-year loss of glacier mass in recent history.
The team was made up of a collaboration of scientists including researchers from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Their results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.