Arctic Archipelago: Ground Zero For Climate Change

  Summer temperatures on the archipelago of Svalbard, 400 miles north of Norway, are now higher than at any other period in the last 1,800 years, according to a new study in the journal Geology. Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. The archipelago features an Arctic climate, although with significantly higher temperatures than other areas at the same latitude. Sixty percent of the archipelago is glacier, and the islands feature many mountains and fjords.

  The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a 400-year span of relatively hot climate in the North Atlantic region from about 950 to 1250 A.D. led some to argue that contemporary global warming is a natural occurrence. The climate reconstruction of Svalbard undercuts skeptics who deny evidence that we are scorching the planet with the release of high concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Since 1987, summers on Svalbard have been 2 degrees to 2.5 degrees Celsius hotter than they were there during the warmest parts of the MWP.

  Svalbard is particularly interesting because it is at the northern limit of influence of important North Atlantic Ocean and atmospheric circulation systems, so small changes in their behavior will likely cause a significant climate response. The researchers also demonstrated that the period of most extensive glacier advance on Svalbard in the last 10,000 years (during another anomalous period the 18th and 19th centuries called “Little Ice Age”) was not characterized by very cold summers; rather, increased wintertime snowfall was responsible for the glacier advances.

3. An Arctic climate is characteristic of the archipelago.T/F