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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Anine Hartmann @aninehartmann.bsky.social · 7d

Jeg tror dette er godt kjent blant alle som jobber med planlegging i Norge: Vi er verst i Europa på å bygge ned natur.

NRK avslører europeisk naturtap: Norge topper verstingliste

www.nrk.no

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

VAW Glaciology @vaw-glaciology.bsky.social · 22d

Incredible ice loss measured again at #Konkordiaplatz on the #Aletsch #Glacier, home to the thickest ice in the #Alps (still about 800 m!). Yesterday’s survey revealed another –4.6 m of ice gone in just one year. :(
Measurements by @matthias-huss.bsky.social for GLAMOS

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 22

So in line with your results it may be reasonable that the high temperatures in August have been accompanied with enhanced drainage, thermal erosion and further subsidence, that intensified this rapid thaw and the collapse of the ice wedges

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 22

Many thanks for sharing, Frans-Jan! The results are very interesting. The previous winter brought more than normal of snow to the actual area, and even in August, there were still some snow patches, which resulted in a wetter tundra than normal.

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 21

Yes! It's remarkable to see these significant changes

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 21

Warming and thawing permafrost is confirmed by data from nearby monitoring stations. 2025 will be another bad year for the permafrost in Svalbard. Still some weeks left of the thawing season..

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 21

Thawing has intensified over the last few summers in Svalbard.

Thawing ice-wedge polygons in the continuous permafrost of Svalbard 78 °N, Aug 2025

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 21

Witnessing the rapid and extensive thawing of permafrost in Svalbard is truly impressive but deeply concerning

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · Aug 20

"Melting on the Arctic’s Svalbard Islands Shows the Climate Future Is Now" by @bberwyn.bsky.social for @insideclimatenews.org: insideclimatenews.org/news/1908202...

Melting on the Arctic’s Svalbard Islands Shows the Climate Future Is Now - Inside Climate News

The rapid disintegration of glaciers on the islands north of Norway foreshadows a catastrophic future for the Arctic, scientists warn.

insideclimatenews.org

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 20

Ice melt records set in 2020 and 2022 were just marginally greater than previous years, but an extreme and long Arctic heat wave last summer, intensified by weather patterns disrupted by climate change, opened a new page in the record books
insideclimatenews.org/news/1908202...

Melting on the Arctic’s Svalbard Islands Shows the Climate Future Is Now - Inside Climate News

The rapid disintegration of glaciers on the islands north of Norway foreshadows a catastrophic future for the Arctic, scientists warn.

insideclimatenews.org

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

New Scientist @newscientist.com · Aug 19

During the summer of 2024, six weeks of record-smashing heat led to a record-obliterating amount of ice melting on the islands of Svalbard in the Arctic.

Unprecedented Arctic heatwave melted 1 per cent of Svalbard's ice

A six-week period of extraordinary heat in 2024 melted 62 gigatonnes of ice on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, obliterating all previous melt records

www.newscientist.com

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Mika Rantanen @mikarantane.bsky.social · Aug 19

Summer 2024 featured unprecedented warmth in the European Arctic, causing melting of 1 % of the total ice volume on Svalbard.

Bad news is that in 2100 and even in the optimistic SSP1-2.6 emission scenario, 50% of the future summers will be warmer than 2024.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Fig. 4a of the paper. The caption of the paper: Projected temperature evolution until 2100. (A) shows JJA air temperature measured at Svalbard Airport (black) and corresponding downscaled statistics from CMIP6 multimodel ensembles for four different SSPs. The shaded regions mark the 5 to 95% CI for the respective SSP, and the solid lines show the ensemble means. The level of the observed value for 2024 is indicated by the horizontal dashed line, and the yellow horizontal bar indicates the mean value of the 1991–2020 climatology. Vertical bars indicate the time when the ensemble means reach the observed 2024 level.

Fig. S3a of the paper. Cumulative CMB for all Svalbard glaciers for the season 2023/24 (blue), compared to the mean (black) and range of the 1991-2020 climatology (gray).

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

James Kirkham @jdkirkham.bsky.social · Aug 19

Shocking stats from this paper on the extreme 2024 summer heat in Arctic Svalbard, which lost 1% of its total ice volume in just ~6 weeks. 🔥

In fact, Svalbard's 2024 glacier mass loss actually exceeded that of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is 50 times larger!!! 😱

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

❄️🧪🌊

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Melaine Le Roy @subfossilguy.bsky.social · Aug 19

2024 glacier loss in Svalbard was beyond imagination! 😱

- Anomaly of up to 4 SD!
- Amounts to ~61.7 Gt => 1% of the total ice volume
- Comparable to that of the Greenland ice sheet (55 Gt), which is 50 x larger!

... Otherworldly! 🪐

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Svalbard’s 2024 record summer: An early view of Arctic glacier meltdown? | PNAS

A record-breaking melt season affected the Arctic glaciers of Svalbard in summer 2024 by a substantial margin. Across the entire archipelago, glaci...

www.pnas.org

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 19

Thank you, Mika! The research was established through a exciting collaboration between the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Polar Institute, the Norwegian Mapping Authority, and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute @uio.no @npiglaciology.bsky.social @met.no

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 18

Our latest research investigates the remarkable heatwave that affected part of the Arctic in the summer of 2024. It caused a 1 percent loss in Svalbard's ice, making this region one of the most significant contributors to global sea-level rise last year www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 14

This July reminded us that in the north, heat is not a distant threat but is seeping into hospitals, care facilities & homes. Our infrastructure was not built to withstand these extreme temperatures and our population is increasingly susceptible to dangerous heat www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘No country is safe’: deadly Nordic heatwave supercharged by climate crisis, scientists say

Historically cool nations saw hospitals overheating and surge in drownings, wildfires and toxic algal blooms

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Matthias Huss @matthias-huss.bsky.social · Aug 11

Getting used to this image: #glaciers almost completely naked - unprotected by the white snow - in August...
While July was good for glaciers after record-melt in June, the new heat wave again results in major ice loss
@vaw-glaciology.bsky.social

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · Aug 6

This is unbelievable.

The high temperature at one of Finland’s northernmost weather stations, in the municipality of Sodankylä (Lapland region) within the Arctic Circle at latitude 67.3°N, reached at least 25°C for 26 days in a row.

Records date back to 1908.

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Mika Rantanen @mikarantane.bsky.social · Aug 4

Inspired by @ketilisaksen.bsky.social post, I did the same analysis for Finland.

In terms of 14-day average temperatures, the 2025 heatwave in Finland did not quite surpass the well-known 1972 and 2018 heatwaves.

This is based on 10 km gridded observations.

Bar chart showing the top ten warmest 14-day periods in Finland, as measured by area average temperature for Finland. The data is based FMI ClimGrid temperature which is gridded 10 km dataset for Finland.

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 3

Melting glaciers threaten to wipe out European villages - is the steep cost to protect them worth it? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Why glaciers are threatening to wipe out more mountain villages

Switzerland spends almost $500m a year on protective structures. Is it worth it - or, as some suggest, should people move away from the mountain villages at risk?

www.bbc.com

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 2

En sommer med ekstremvær www.nrk.no/klima/ekstre...

Ekstremværsommeren 2025

www.nrk.no

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Reposted by Ketil Isaksen

Signe Aaboe @signeaaboe.bsky.social · Aug 2

Disregarding the extreme and record-low sea-ice extent in Antarctic the last two years, this year's July extent is exceptionally low, ranking as the 3rd lowest on record.

The July extent over the last four years differs significantly from that of the previous four decades.

@osi-saf.eumetsat.int

Map showing the Antarctic anomaly of the July 2025 sea-ice concentration relative to the mean July ice concentration in 1981-2010. Especially, the sea ice around the Antarctic Peninsula, and in the King Haakon VII sea, shows large areas of negative anomaly (red colour).
Source data is OSI SAF sea-ice concentration CDR v3.0.

The line graph displays the monthly sea-ice extent in the Antarctic for July from 1979 to 2025. In 2025, the July extent ranked as the third lowest on record.
Source data is OSI SAF sea-ice index.

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Ketil Isaksen @ketilisaksen.bsky.social · Aug 2

Nordic countries hit by ‘truly unprecedented’ heatwave www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Nordic countries hit by ‘truly unprecedented’ heatwave

Scientists record longest streak of temperatures higher than 30C in region in records going back to 1961

www.theguardian.com

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