“The situation in Svalbard is so bad that we cannot do our work,” researchers report. This is unfavourable for both climate and research. Spring has come to the region earlier than ever before. “The situation in Svalbard is so bad that we cannot work,” researcher Eirik Malnes told Science Norway. Researchers describe this year's spring as one of the most unpredictable and difficult they have ever experienced.

“This year's spring has come far too early,” stresses E. Malnes of the NORCE research institute. As a result, three international research teams have run into serious obstacles in their fieldwork.

Researchers from Poland have been unable to reach the Svalbard study sites at all, while scientists from Norway and Italy are still contending with a lack of snow cover at their sites, rapid snowmelt and unstable weather conditions.

“In the Longyearbyen area the thermometers read +4 °C, while the April norm is around -15 °C. Instead of a 30-centimetre-thick layer of snow, the ground at our sites is already bare,” said Polish scientist Bartłomiej Luks.

The snow has melted

The research teams are in Norway's Svalbard to observe the effects of climate change. Here in the Arctic, change is happening faster than elsewhere — warming, for example, can proceed five to seven times faster than the global average. One way of monitoring this is by observing snow. Researchers take physical measurements on the ground and compare them with satellite observations. To carry out this work, scientists travel by snowmobile. At present the snow cover situation in Adventdalen, near Longyearbyen, has become dramatic, as the valley is almost entirely free of snow. After only a few days the researchers had to break off their work, and the University Centre in Svalbard, UNIS, has suspended all snowmobile traffic until further notice.

The Polish team could not reach Hornsund

A similar situation befell the researchers from Poland. They had planned to carry out fieldwork in April in the area around the Polish research station at Hornsund. Among other things, they were to measure the water content of the snow at the Fuglebekken study site and conduct a new isotope experiment on the Werenskioldbreen glacier.

The scientists' aim was to understand how snow evaporates in warmer conditions. The early onset of spring this year upset their plans. Dense sea ice blocked the fjord at Hornsund, preventing the research vessel from docking and putting personnel and equipment ashore. At the same time, on the west coast of Spitsbergen, where the Werenskioldbreen glacier lies, the snow was melting unusually early and intensively. For the first time in several decades, the climate scientists from Poland were unable to carry out any fieldwork in this area at all.

In future, polar research may have to be carried out from the air

Eirik Malnes believes this year's situation shows that polar research has reached a crossroads: “We will most likely have to begin work at the start of the year, even though that creates great difficulties because of the polar night, and planning will become more complicated.” He stresses that satellite observations are becoming ever more important now that the traditional snowmobile expeditions in April are becoming far riskier and more unpredictable. The scientist acknowledges that fieldwork remains essential in order to check whether satellite data are accurate. “We have been doing this for many years,” he stresses. “The question now is whether this work can be continued in the same way in future.”