Something strange is happening this year in the Svalbard archipelago

February of this year, 2025, it is full winter, but some areas in the Svalbard archipelago do not seem to be aware: melted ice and green sprouts peeling among the rocks attract the attention of a group of scientists who work in these Norwegian islands in the middle of the Arctic polar circle.

Something does not fit.

A February too warm. The Researchers Team I recently caught attention About this fact, and did Through an article Posted in the magazine Nature Communications. In this piece it is pointed out that, for several days in February 2025, the temperatures recorded in this area exceeded 0º Celsius, the water freezing temperature.

An archipelago in the eye of the hurricane. The increase in temperatures that we associate with climate change is not a uniform phenomenon: while some areas of the globe They coolabout hundreds of kilometers others are heated much faster than average. This is the case of the Svalbard archipelago.

This set of islands belongs to Norway and is located in the middle of the Arctic Circle. The Svalbard archipelago is the place where we can find the most northern civil settlement on the planet, NY-work.

From white to green. The exceptional warming in these islands was apparent to the team beyond the measurements captured by the thermometers. The snow in the area had backed away not only huge puddles of liquid water, but also suggesting the rock surface of the islands and the tundra’s own vegetation in summer.

“Being on water swimming pools at the tip of the glacier on green, naked, was shocking and surreal,” described in a press release James Bradley. “The thick layer of snow that covered the landscape vanished in days. The team I wore felt like a relic of another climate.”

Rain, no snow. These changes made almost impossible for the team to perform their work. First because its goal was to collect snow samples that rushed in this polar environment.

In Words by researcher Laura Molares Moncayo“The objective of our field work campaign was to study newly fallen snow. But for a period of two weeks, we were only able to collect newly fallen snow once, since most of the precipitation fell in the form of rain.”

The change also involved added difficulties, including more risks derived from the activity. The thaw hindered vehicles transit, making access to certain areas difficult, but also making the task of returning to the camp more complicated in the face of unexpected dangers, dangers that include, for example, the encounter with polar bears.

Feedback According to the team, the implications of these changes can be very relevant beyond the difficulties involved for scientists working in the environment. According to the team itselfwarm events such as that registered in February can affect many different systems, “from the microbial carbon cycle to the survival of the Arctic Fauna.”

In case it was not enough, these events can also generate a loop: by melting permafrost, soil that remains frozen all year, greenhouse gases are released that in turn aggravate heating.

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Image | Bradley, Molares Moncayo, et al. (2025), Nature Communications