Transcript:
Few places on Earth are warming as fast as Svalbard, a cluster of Norwegian islands about 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
And the glaciers that cover much of Svalbard are shrinking quickly.
Bamber: “Everywhere we look across the archipelago of these islands, we see accelerated melting because of the enhanced warming over that area.”
In a recent study, Jonathan Bamber and his team at the University of Bristol in the U.K. used artificial intelligence to analyze millions of satellite images of the glaciers on Svalbard that extend into the ocean.
They found that over about 40 years, almost all of those glaciers have shrunk. Together they lost an average of about 6,000 acres each year – an area larger than 4,000 football fields.
So they’re receding at an alarming rate.
Bamber: “And in particular over the last two decades that rate has increased for most of those glaciers.”
It’s a worrisome preview of how dramatically climate change will affect other massive glaciers as temperatures continue to rise.
And when glaciers melt into the ocean, seas rise globally – so what’s happening to remote glaciers will affect coastal communities worldwide.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
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