New Research Shows Svalbard Glacier Has Survived Warmer Past

New research published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment has investigated the glaciers of Svalbard, exploring whether past responses to a warmer climate can be applied to the current climate warming. 

The researchers have looked at lake sediments and analyzed them using various methods to understand how the glaciers reacted to warmer conditions in the past. By figuring out how the glaciers were impacted during previous warming, the researchers could provide insight into how they could potentially react to future changes.

The results show that the Åsgardfonna glacier on Svalbard survived and perhaps even thrived despite warmer conditions in Holocene Thermal Maximum conditions, which were warmer than present. This could be due to enhanced snowfall, which was driven by the loss of sea ice. 

The results could indicate that future increases in precipitation could moderate glacier retreat in similar settings.

Glaciers from 2000 to 2023

Glaciers gain mass through snowfall and lose mass through melting and sublimation (water evaporating). Melting glaciers are one of the main contributors to the rise of the global sea level. In addition, melting glaciers lead to a significant loss of regional freshwater resources.

In the Arctic, temperatures are increasing twice to three times as fast as the rest of the planet due to sea ice loss. This phenomenon is known as Arctic amplification and puts the glaciers at a high risk. Together with the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, glaciers are essential drivers of present and future sea-level rise.

A new report from the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) recently published in the journal Nature has mapped the global glacier mass changes from 2000 to 2023.  The findings are based on two decades of satellite observations. 

According to the new report, Glaciers are melting at twice the rate recorded in the early 2000s. 2023 saw the highest loss of mass on record, with 604 billion tons of ice. 

Melting glaciers have caused a nearly 2 cm sea level rise this century after a loss of approximately 5% of their total volume. This corresponds to an annual loss of 273 billion tonnes of ice, but the findings show that there has been an alarming increase over the last ten years. In the first half of the study period, 231 billion tonnes were lost annually. This increased to 314 billion tonnes in the second half.

"To put this in perspective, the 273 billion tonnes of ice lost annually amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person a day," Michael Zemp, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, who co-led the analysis, said in a statement.

In the Arctic, however, the melting glaciers are mainly a risk for sea level rise, says glaciologist Inés Dussaillant at the University of Zurich, who was part of the GlaMBIE analyses:

“When it comes to sea-level rise, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, with their much larger glacier areas, are the key players. However, almost one-quarter of the glacier contribution to sea-level rise originates from Alaska.”