Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Media, โexpertsโ blame global warming for surging glaciers!
The article from Germanyโs online Merkur discusses a seemingly paradoxical but dangerous phenomenon in the context of climate change: glacier โsurgesโ (sudden advances).
Media, โexpertsโ blame global warming for surging glaciers!
The article from Germanyโs online Merkur discusses a seemingly paradoxical but dangerous phenomenon in the context of climate change: glacier โsurgesโ (sudden advances).
Symbol image of a Karakoram glacier, generated for illustration purposes only by Grok AI.
While glaciers worldwide are said to be shrinking due to global warming, there are a number of exceptions. Some are growing suddenly at extreme speeds, extending up to 100 times faster than usual.
The reported sudden advances are said to be triggered by unstable mechanical conditions inside or at the base of the glacier. For example, meltwater can act as a lubricant, causing the ice to slide. The rapid movement can cause massive amounts of ice to become unstable and break off.
Moreover, the advancing ice masses can block valleys, causing lakes to form behind them. If these natural dams burst later, devastating flood waves hit lower-lying regions.
The focus is particularly on high mountain ranges such as the Karakoram (Asia), parts of Alaska, and Svalbard. In the Karakoram, scientists observe the โKarakoram Anomaly,โ where many glaciers remain stable or are exhibiting dangerous surges despite global warming.
However, researchers emphasize that these advances are not a sign of glacial recovery or an end to global warming. On the contrary: they claim that climate change is altering glacier dynamics so significantly that such unpredictable and dangerous events may occur more frequently or intensely.
They conclude that these growing glaciers are not a reason to relax regarding climate change; instead, they represent a new, life-threatening danger for mountain regions by significantly increasing the risk of natural disasters.
โThe climate change is rewriting the rules of the game: Glaciers are suddenly growing and becoming hotbeds for disasters,โ writes the Merkur. โThese advances are not a sign of recovery, but rather a symptom of extreme instability in the ice system.โ
Experts are claiming that these glacier surges are not caused by more snow falling, but by the ice becoming so unstable that it loses its grip on the ground and โslipsโ forward at high speed, often leading to floods and landslides.
Holocene (11,700 to 8,200 years ago) Arctic (Svalbard) temperatures โwere up to 9ยฐC higher than todayโ according to the authors of aย newย Natureย journal study. At that time CO2 was thought to only hover around 260 ppm.
Holocene (11,700 to 8,200 years ago) Arctic (Svalbard) temperatures โwere up to 9ยฐC higher than todayโ according to the authors of a newNature journal study. At that time CO2 was thought to only hover around 260 ppm.
Svalbard then cooled as CO2 rose for the next 8,000 years โ a negative correlation that wholly contradicts the rising-CO2-drives-Arctic-warmth narrative.
Nonetheless, climate models are predicated on the assumption rising human CO2 emissions (RCP 8.5) will lead to a warming of ~8ยฐC by 2100.
The BBCโs coverage of climate change and related policy issues, such as energy policy, has long been of serious and widespread concern. There have been numerous instances of factual errors, bias and omission of alternative views to theย BBCโs narrative.
The BBCโs coverage of climate change and related policy issues, such as energy policy, has long been of serious and widespread concern. There have been numerous instances of factual errors, bias and omission of alternative views to theย BBCโs narrative.
Our 2022 paper, Institutional Alarmism, provided many examples. Some led to formal complaints, later upheld
However, many programmes and articles escaped such attention, though we believed they were equally biased and misleading. They include:
The third most active hurricane season
In December 2021,ย BBCย News reported that โThe 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has now officially ended, and itโs been the
third most active on recordโ.
It was nothing of the sort. There were seven Atlantic hurricanes in 2021, and since 1851 there have been 32 years with a higher count.
The article also made great play of the fact that all of the pre-determined names had been used up, implying that hurricanes are becoming more common. They failed to explain, however, that with satellite technology we are now able to spot hurricanes in mid-ocean that would have been missed before.
Hurricanes: are they getting more violent?
Shortly after Hurricane Ian in September 2022, aย BBCย โReality Checkโ claimed โHurricanes are among the most violent
storms on Earth and thereโs evidence theyโre getting more powerfulโ. The video offered absolutely no data or evidence to back up this claim, which contradicted the official agencies.
For instance, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) state in their latest review:
โThere is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for
Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for observing capabilities), there is not strong evidence for an increase
since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.
The IPCC came to a similar conclusion about hurricanes globally in their latest Assessment Review. However, theย BBC
article failed to mention any of this.
The Norfolk village crumbling into the sea
Coastal erosion in Norfolk has been a go-to issue for theย BBCโs climate change propagandists. In January 2023, aย BBCย News
reporter visited Happisburgh, one of the villages affected, and spoke to a resident. The report claimed that “punishing weather
conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the villageโs soft sandy rock that her house is now the last one before
the cliff edge”.
In fact, the coast in that part of Norfolk has been retreating for thousands of years, for reasons that are geological rather
than climatalogical. According to the British Geological Society: โIt is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present
rate for about the last 5000 years.โ
The historical record also clearly details the loss of large chunks of the village to the sea since the Middle Ages. Following
a complaint, theย BBCย have been unable to offer any evidence for their claim.
Heat pumps are much cheaper to run
Inย BBCย world, all renewable and low carbon technologies are wonderful. In October 2021,ย BBCย News claimed that โheat pumps
are much cheaper to runโ than gas boilers. There is no truth in this, as theย BBCโs Executive Complaints Unit was finally forced to admit 16 months later.
Quite why it took them so long to correct such a blatantly obvious error is a mystery.
Svalbard: the fastest warming place on Earth
In October 2022, theย BBCย published a long report on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, reporting that โthe temperature in
Svalbard has jumped 4C [sic] in the past 50 yearsโ.
However, they failed to point out that temperatures in that part of the world plunged between the 1950s and 70s, and are now only about a degree higher than at the start of the 20th century.
Pakistan floods: one third of country is under water
Reporting on the dreadful floods in Pakistan in summer 2022, theย BBCย stated: โOne-third of Pakistan has been completely submerged by historic flooding, its climate minister says.โ
A quick map check would have told the reporter that this claim was simply absurd, as most of Pakistan is covered by mountains
and deserts. A subsequentย BBCย programme, More Or Less, admitted the claim was false, and estimated that the real figure was
about 10 percent. Incredibly though, Lord Deben, Chair of the Committee on Climate Change, made exactly the same false claim in aย BBCย interview in January 2023. Theย BBCย interviewer failed to challenge him.
Puff piece for solar power
“Queen Elizabeth Prize: Solar team wins prestigious engineering award”, was written in February this year, with the usual over-the-top praise for how wonderful solar power is and claiming that its uptake is rocketing. To illustrate its message, it used a graph showing share of power capacity.
Readers seeing it would naturally have believed that solar power is now a significant contributor to the energy mix. Unfortunately, theย BBCย forgot to explain that capacity and electricity generation are two different things, and that because solar power only produces a small fraction of its capacity (just 11% in the UK), it still only supplies 3% of the worldโs electricity.
Extreme weather is the norm
Theย BBCย uncritically reported the World Meteorological Organizationโs latest claims that โextreme weather events are the new normalโ. Yet this idea contradicts successive reviews from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Moreover, just a
month before theย BBCย ran the story, an authoritative study had concluded that there was no clear positive trend in extreme
events, such as floods, droughts, tropical cyclones or tornadoes.
Bee-eaters โworrying sign of climate changeโ
Last summer a few bee-eaters (see Figure 2) turned up in Norfolk, to the delight of twitchers. But for theย BBCย this news was worrying, as they reported: Rare โrainbow birdsโ trying to breed in the UK was a worrying sign of how our climate is changing.
Pushed northwards by climate change, these exotic birds will likely become established summer visitors in the future, having been an early and unmissable sign in the past two decades that the nature and climate emergency has reached our shores. 18
In fact, as any half-knowledgable bird watcher would have told theย BBC, bee-eaters have frequently visited England in the past. These sightings have been very carefully recorded in British bird books, as far back as 1793. Indeed, one archive alone lists 80
sightings between 1793 and 1957.
Trees threatened by climate change
According to theย BBC, a study has found that many trees in cities in England are at risk of drought linked to climate change.
Many are already supposedly stressed. Drier weather under climate change is expected to have a big impact on trees, particularly in York, London and Birmingham, we are told. Yet Met Office data shows that these areas are not getting drier; nor is there any evidence that they will. Once again, theย BBCย is uncritically presenting a controversial study as factual.
Driest start to year since 1976
England certainly had a notably dry spring and summer last year. But maybe not quite as dry as theย BBCย would like you to believe. On 26 July 2022, their report claimed that it had been the driest January to June in England since 1976.21 Itโs a pity they did not check the Met Office data first, which would have told them it had actually been drier in 1996 and 2010.21But โdriest start to the year since 2010โ hardly has the same ring to it!
The article also featured a photo of a dried-up reservoir. In fact, this was trick photography, as the dried up part was merely a small area at the head of the Dowry Reservoir, near Oldham.
Similar images of the same part of the reservoir have often been published in past years, such as 2013 and 2019.
Sea ice extent for Svalbard wasย above average yesterdayย and has beenย since 17 July, despiteย โrecord-breakingโย sea surface temperatures in June.
The temperature anomaly for June in the North Atlantic was 2-3 C above average, seeย image below.
Overall, the Barents Sea polar bear subpopulation region still has concentrated pack ice to the north and around Franz Josef Land in the east:
Oddly, sea ice over the Barents Sea in 2016 at 20 July was much less than this year (see below), after a June of apparently unremarkable North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.
As for the status of polar bears around Svalbard, Norwegian scientists who monitor the bears have not updatedย the MOSJ websiteย with data from this springโs research, as they have been doing for the last several years at least. Last year this chore was completed by 31 May andย I reported on it in June. Iโve never seen it go this late and there has been no explanation for the delay.
Historical records show that sea ice extent along the west coast of Svalbard, Norway varied greatly in the 1600s and that there is currently more ice than was usually present at this time of year in the 17th century.
Historical records show that sea ice extent along the west coast of Svalbard, Norway varied greatly in the 1600s and that there is currently more ice than was usually present at this time of year in the 17th century.
April through early June is when polar bears need sea ice the mostโfor feeding on newborn seals and for finding matesโand so far this spring, bears in the Western European Arctic around Svalbard, Norway have had an abundance of ice. In fact, there is only a little less ice than was normal for the late 1970s and apparently, quite a bit more than was often present in the 1600s.
Western European Arctic 1975-1979
The Western European Arctic is centered on Svalbard in the Barents Sea but includes the Denmark Strait off East Greenland and western Kara Sea off Novaya Zemlya. The map below shows average ice extent for April in the late 1970s (Degroot 2022: his figure 1). Note how much of Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya are covered in glaciers and how little ice there was around the extreme tip ofย southeast Greenlandย (Laidre et al. 2012, 2022).
Barents Sea Arctic ice extent 2023
Note the amount of pack ice butting up against the entire north shore of Svalbard, which wasnโt happening even in the late 1970s. There was more ice along the west shores of Spitsbergen (largest Svalbard island) and Novaya Zemlya, and along the north shore of Russia in the Barents Sea (west of Novaya Zemlya) but otherwise there isnโt a huge amount of difference. There is an abundance of sea ice now as there was then in the spring, when polar bears need it the most.
Hereโs how current ice extent looks according to the numbers just for the Svalbard area, against an average of 1991-2020. Note that only one standard deviation is presented (two is standard).
Compare above to previous years, charts saved from the NIS archive for early May in 2009, 2012, and 2016.
Degrootโs research on whaling activities during the 17th century indicates that the west coast of Spitsbergen being largely free of sea ice by early April was the norm even during the Little Ice Age (LIA). As he puts it, on pg. 70 (my bold):
During the first decades of the seventeenth century, up to one hundred thousand bowhead whales calved and mated near Jan Mayen early each year. In the spring, the whales migrated northeast along the retreating edge of the vast expanse of congregated sea iceโice formed by frozen salt waterโthat constitutes the Arctic ice pack (fig. 1). By early April, they entered feeding grounds in bays along Svalbardโs largest islands, Spitsbergen and Edgeรธya, that were now largely clear of sea ice (fig. 2).
Figure 2 from his paper (below) shows that one of the primary โbaysโ used by bowhead whales included a huge fjord on the northwest coast of Spitsbergen with several entrances that was favoured by whalers, called Smeerenburgfjorden. โHollanderโs Bayโ marks an important onshore whale processing camp established in the 1600s.
Smeerenburgfjorden is today (3 May 2023) inaccessible due to fast and pack ice (closeup ofย NIS chartย below, see extreme upper left corner):
The large island of Edgeรธya in the southeastern portion of the archipelago, mentioned by DeGroot as also being used by whales in the 1600s in early April, is also inaccessible today (3 May 2023), as the closeup ice chart below shows:
Bottom line: Sea ice extent off the west coast of Svalbard in the Western European Arctic has been highly variable in spring and summer for centuries: some decades had much less ice, some decades had much more. Currently, there is more ice than was present in early May in many years of the 1600s. Amazing how useful a bit of historical perspective can be in cooling down the hot air.
References
Degroot, D. 2022. Blood and bone, tears and oil: Climate change, whaling, and conflict in the seventeenth-century Arctic.The American Historical Review 127(1):62โ99. Open access. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac009
Laidre, K.L., Born, E.W., Gurarie, E., Wiig, O., Dietz, R. and Stern, H. 2012. Females roam while males patrol: divergence in breeding season movements of pack ice polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 1-10. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2371 Open access http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1752/20122371
Laidre, K.L., Supple, M.A., Born, E.W., et al. 2022. Glacial ice supports a distinct and undocumented polar bear subpopulation persisting in late 21st century sea-ice conditions. Science 376(6599):1333-1338.
Early in the morning on Good Friday (7 April), a mature polar bear sow with a cub at heal was chased with snowmobiles away from a recreation area used by locals on the west coast but drowned after she escaped into the water. Her cub, likely a yearling male, attacked authorities trying to retrieve her body and was shot.
Early in the morning on Good Friday (7 April), a mature polar bear sow with a cub at heal wasย chased with snowmobilesย away from a recreation area used by locals on the west coast but drowned after she escaped into the water. Her cub, likely a yearling male, attacked authorities trying to retrieve her body and was shot.
It turns out this 17 year old female was well known to locals and is considered Svalbardโs most famous polar bear. They call her โFrost.โ She featured in the 2019 Attenborough-narrated Netflix documentary Our Planet, in the sequence showing the stalk of a newborn ringed seal pup (see screencap above), which was likely filmed in early 2018 after the cliff-falling walrus scenes in Russia that were filmed in October 2017. h/t Sheila.
Frost apparently returns every year to this fjord complex near Longyearbyen, the capital city, to hunt ringed seals on the frozen ice and this has put her in regular close association with people. The map below shows the location of Longyearbyen on the west coast and the many glaciers that cover the archipelago.
One photographer boasts of having filmed her for five years (see tweet below), which suggests she is habituated to having people around. Past videos and photos of her show a bear in excellent condition (i.e., fat) and indicate she is an accomplished hunter despite claimsย reiterated by Attenboroughย [watch at 34:14 to 39:00 inย Our Planet] that global warming is making things difficult for bears in this area. However, there are no photos of her body condition this year.
Helgestad traveled specially from Norway to Spitsbergen yesterday to see Frost one last time "He is heartbroken, not only by the death of the bear but also by the lack of information" – and the "chase"
It transpired that this female had been tranquilized a few days before as part of annual spring research conducted by the Norwegian Polar Institute and there is concern that drugs used to sedate her were still in her system and may have contributed to her death, perhaps exacerbated by the long chase before she entered the water. This may be possible but is not confirmed: a young bear died in September 2020 after being sedated and chased by researchers in their fall survey.
However, two or three days seems rather a long time to be suffering such effects from sedation: if she was very fat, it could have simply been heat exhaustion that got her, which polar bears are prone to suffer from if chased for extended periods.
During the night โ which is not dark anymore, the midnight sun is not far away โ the little bear family was seen by people near Vindodden. Vindodden is a small peninsula in Sassenfjord with a couple of huts owned and used by locals from Longyearbyen, and during spring weekends, especially the Easter weekend, it is very popular to stay in a hut.
The polar bears approached the huts, where people tried to scare them away with warning shots fired from signal pistols. This worked, and the polar bears moved away, swimming in the fjord.
โฆThe female bear was soon seen dead in the water, head down, with the cub swimming around her. The Sysselmester (police) was alarmed and came by helicopter. The dead female was retrieved from the water.
The cub approached, the personell tried to scare the cub away, but this time, it did not work and the cub was subsequently shot.
It is my understanding from reports on previous incidents in Svalbard that people are forbidden from leaving stored food in these recreational huts because it can attract bears. However, it sounds like these particular cabins were actually in use and therefore had food people had brought with them.
Frost the polar bear was not only famous for her photogenic qualities and tolerance to people. It appears that she is also the mother of the young male that killed a camper in his tent in August 2020 and that over the years, she and various cubs have been responsible for many damaged huts. Frost may be the bear responsible for incidents I reported on in late March 2021.
According to a follow-up report on this incident (12 April), my bold:
Last Fridayโs events at Vindodden in Sassenfjord will now be investigated by appropriate authorities, mainly Sysselmesteren. As of now, there is no indication of criminal behaviour, as Svalbardposten reports.
It is said that Frost was marked by scientists (Norwegian Polar Institute) during the days before her dead. Marking polar bears always involves general aenesthesia dispensed with a rifle shot from a helicopter. A potential connection of the aenesthesia and Frostโs death will be part of the investigation.
Frost had a cub with her that attacked the action forces as they retrieved her body from the sea. The cub was shot. Also this part of the incident will be investigated.
During her long life, Frost and her offspring had frequent contact with people and infrastructure, some of which was harmful or even tragic. This ranges from many damaged huts to the death of Johan (โJobโ) Kootte in August 2020, which was caused by one of Frostโs cubs. Several of her cubs lost their lives during these and other incidents.
Bottom line: At least one person has died because of this bearโs preference for hunting in the one area in the entire archipelago where people are abundant in spring and summer. Her tolerance for the presence of people nearby, especially photographers, appears to have been passed along to several of her offspring, resulting in their deaths. Habituation of bears to people comes with a price.
Sea ice conditions
Two days before the incident:abundant ice on the east coast but this particular bear prefers to hunt in a western fjord where the deepest reaches have shore-fast ice (dark grey on this chart) that ringed seals use for giving birth in the spring and where there is glacier ice in summer:
This overall reduction in kills, despite greatly reduced sea ice habitat availability and more polar bears spending more time on land, may reflect success of the Svalbard Environmental Act of 2001.โ
In another failed prediction, a new study on the number of polar bears killed in self-defense in Svalbard, Norway did not find the expected correlation with lack of sea ice or more tourists (Vongraven et al. 2023). Contrary to expectations, fewer bears were actually killed in self-defence as sea ice declined between 1987 and 2019.
Money Quote from the abstract:
โโฆice cover had no significant impact on the odds for a [polar bear] kill.โ
โPoor ice conditions for polar bears at Svalbard this year. Low ice will make tough hunting conditions this coming spring.ย Time to plan for more human-bear conflictsย unless conditions change.โย [13 Feb 2023 tweet, my bold]
Vongraven et al. 2023, Figure 4A, number of polar bears killed in self-defence 1987-2019.
From the Discussion section of the Vongraven paper (pg. 9), my bold:
โMore bears on land for longer periods during which more people were accessing the same habitats could have been expected to increase the number of bear-human interactions, and the number of bears killed in defence of life and property. Despite a positive relationship between number of tourists and number of kills at a given time, the total numbers of bears killed did not increase over the years of the study and per-capita kills strongly declined. โฆ This overall reduction in kills, despite greatly reduced sea ice habitat availability and more polar bears spending more time on land, may reflect success of the Svalbard Environmental Act of 2001.โ
Nice save there, at the end. Hey, this wasnโt a failure of our prediction that loss of sea ice due to global warming would cause more polar bears to be killed because they attacked people, itโs a resounding victory for a law prohibiting people โseeking outโ polar bears! As noted in the next two sentences:
โThis act prohibits people from โluring, pursuing or otherwise seeking out polar bears in such a way as to disturb them or expose either bears or humans to dangerโ (Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, 2001). These requirements may make visitors more cautious and result in human behaviours that make lethal conflicts between humans and bears less likely.โ
I wonder why polar bear researchers hadnโt considered this option before they started harping about lack of ice (Abrahms et al. 2023: Atwood and Wilder 2021; Rode et al. 2022; Wilder et al. 2017)? Odd, that.
I note with interest that this law appears not to have saved the bear that died in August 2020 (the year after this study concluded). The bear that died was not responding to being harassed by people but was shot because he killed a person sleeping in a tent in the early hours of a Svalbard morning.
Bottom line: This result by veteran polar bear researchers blows a big hole in the emerging narrative nudging the public to expect more polar bear attacks and problem incidents with less sea ice. They want people to forget about their failed prediction from a few years ago that declining ice would mean declining numbers (Crockford 2917, 2019) and focus on their new boogeyman. Sadly for them, it appears that a big component of their new prediction is also wrong.
References
Abrahms, B., Carter, N.H., Clark-Wolf, T.J., et al. 2023. Climate change as a global amplifier of humanโwildlife conflict. Nature Climate Change 13:224-234. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01608-5
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/
Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats.
Vongraven, D., Amstrup, S.C., McDonald, T.L., et al. 2023. Relating polar bears killed, human presence, and ice conditions in Svalbard 1987-2019. bioRxiv [preprint] https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.17.533082
Wilder, J.M., Vongraven, D., Atwood, T., et al. 2017. Polar bear attacks on humans: implications of a changing climate. Wildlife Society Bulletin 41(3):537-547. https://doi.org/10.1002/wsb.783
This region is today about 6ยฐC colder than it was during the early Holocene (~10,000 to 8,000 years ago), a climatic period scientists characterize as an optimum, or โmost favorable,โ for a โrich species poolโ of thermophiles.
Back in the Early Holocene, when CO2 levels were said to be ~255 ppm, Arctic Svalbard was warm enough to accommodate abundant numbers ofย thermophiles, or warmth-demanding species. Only โremnantsโ of these species and their habitat exist in todayโs much-colder Arctic.
With the exception of a few centuries in recent millennia, todayโs Svalbard (Arctic) is the most glaciated it has been in the last 10,000 years (see the blue trend line in the below chart from Broลพovรก et al., 2023).
This region is today about 6ยฐC colder than it was during the early Holocene (~10,000 to 8,000 years ago), a climatic period scientists characterize as an optimum, or โmost favorable,โ for a โrich species poolโ of thermophiles.
The sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the western Barents Sea were as warm as 13ยฐC and โsea ice-free during most of the mid-Holoceneโ (ลฤ cka et al., 2019). In contrast, todayโs SST in this region are as cold as they were during the last glacial (2-4ยฐC), when CO2 hovered near 200 ppm. Rapid double-digit SST fluctuations, varying from 3 to 13ยฐC, have been ongoing throughout the Holocene.
The sea ice in the Barents Sea surrounding Svalbard is today nearly the most extensive (80% coverage) of the last 10,000 years. In contrast, when CO2 levels were below 260 ppm, this region of the Arctic was sea ice-free, or nearly so (Koseoglu, 2019).
William Barentsz discovered Arctic Svalbard as he sailed through an open-water Arctic Ocean using a wooden boat (with no ice breakers) in early June, 1596.
In September, 2019, the month of the year with least extensive sea ice, 16 scientists needed to be rescued by helicopters because the massive ship they were using to study climate change couldnโt cut through the ice-covered waters near Svalbard.
In the 1500s, the Western Arctic was sea ice free for about 4-5 months of the year. Today โ and steadily since 1800 โ the Western Arctic is sea ice free only about 2 weeks of the year (Porter et al., 2019).
Finally, according to Rosel et al., 2018, Arctic sea ice was actually thicker in 2015 (1.56 m) and 2017 (1.65 m) than it was in 1955 (0.94 m) in a region north of Svalbard.
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