In winter, the Arctic should be a stunning white landscape – a pristine world of ice and falls snow that stretches thousands of miles.
But shocking photos reveal a new reality in northern sex, thanks to climate change.
Scientists from London who traveled to Svalbard in February and early March reports “dramatic and in terms of shifting in the Arctic winter”.
On the territory of Norway, they encountered extremely high temperatures, widespread snowpowers and bloom vegetation.
Within a few decades, the huge parts of the Arctic in winter could look like the level of Scotland, experts predict.
Dr. James Bradley, the membership company of the Expedition and the Environmental Protection Scientist on London Mari University of London, invites urgent climate action to reduce global warming.
“Standing in the pools of water on the glacier, or on a goal, green tundra, was shocking and surreal,” he said.
‘Climate policy must compensate the reality that the Arctic changes much faster than expected.’
Scientists from London who traveled to Svalbard in February and Mart reports “dramatic and in terms of shifting in the Arctic winter”. There they encountered extremely high temperatures, widespread snowballs and blooming vegetation
Report researchers: “Vegetation appeared through melting snow and ice, showing green shades usually associated with spring and flight”
Dr. Bradley and several other colleagues traveled to Svalbard, Norwegian territory, for fieldwork in February this year.
On Swalbard, sitting in the Arctic Circle, they are “extremely” high air temperatures, among the warmest ever filmed in the Arctic.
For example, in Ni-Alesund, northwest Svalbard and about 745 km (1,200km) from the North Pole, average in February 2025. years -3,3 ° C / 26 ° F.
This is significantly higher than the average of 1961-2001 in the region for this time of year from -15 ° C / 5 ° F.
The team was a witness wide combination of melting in the “huge temporary lake”, which managed to pass like gigantic hunters.
Meanwhile, vegetation appeared through melting snow and ice, showing “green shades” usually associated with spring and flight.
“Bloomy biological activity was widespread through TUNDRA,” Let’s say researchers in their work, published in the nature of communication.
“Surface soils, which are usually a frozen solid at the time during the year, is thawed so that they are soft enough to specify their spa.”
Warming over Svalbard in February 2025. year: The image shows the surface temperature of the anomalies for February 2025. Years over the Arctic region in relation to the average of February in the period 1991-2020. Svalbard is about 500 miles north of Land Norway, east of Greenland
The rain via Svalbarda launched a widespread snow and merging association, which researchers could pass through giant ponds. The picture pooled digging two-way above frozen soil in Nesta Grantre Lovenbreen Glacier, 26. February 2025
Svalbard, heating at six to seven times in a global average price, is at the helm of the climate crisis, according to the team
There was also a lack of snowfall, which instead fell like rain – indicating warmer than the usual conditions.
The team was used to adopt thermal layers and thick gloves, but they often found them to do bare hands in the rain.
“Gear I packed felt like a relic from another climate,” said Dr. Bradley.
The human communities and infrastructure on Svalbard are threatened with winter heating like this, partly due to the possibility of avalanches.
The team warns of the unstable “snow package” – accumulation of snow on earth, compacted with its own weight – which increases the advance risk.
They even questioned their security on Svalbard, suggesting that future fieldwork may not be feasible.
Svalbard, the most sighthen resort in the world, is located on the “line of front” climate crisis, because it is heated at six to seven times more than a global average rate.
The global warming of people was caused specifically enhanced in the Arctic, causing the air conditioning faster than the rest of the country.
During the two-week period, the researchers could only collect fresh snow once, because most precipitation dropped like rain
Snow pit on Austra Brøggerbreen, 1. Marta 2025 (from the snow surface on iceberg) is 60 cm, with more ice layers – indicating that February event melts any event was not a one-time event this winter
Teams work in Ni-Alesund to study icy and earthly microbial communities and their role in carbon and other elementary cycles during the dark, frozen, winter periods may not even be safe due to snowstapness, and not even on snow instability
The big reason for this occurrence – known as “Arctic reinforcement” – is that the relatively dark surface of the ocean absorbs more heat.
And that is more ice melted in the Arctic, it is heat absorbed.
The team’s discoveries cause a long-lasting assumption that the Arctic is “reliably frozen” in winter – and do not think they are “isolated phenomena”.
The events of the warming of winter warming in Svalbard repeated the phenomenon for the last decades as a consequence of climate change that was caused by human means
“Winter heating in the Arctic has long reached the point of melting and the reshaping of arctic landscapes,” they conclude.
“Although a recent event of Thaw since February 2025. was not an isolated effect, a real-time tested as a reminder of accelerating pace changes and we have made us wonderful whether we were too careful whether we were too careful with our climged warnings.
“These winter warming have seen many as an anomaly, but this is the new Arctic.”