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Svalbard winter warming is reaching melting point
The Arctic winters are changing fast. In February 2025, Svalbard endured rain, thawing tundra, and pooling meltwater. The Comment by Bradley and coauthors describes how winter warming is reshaping polar ecosystems—and why this resembles the new Arctic.
Data source: ERA5 8, obtained from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 24. b Daily air temperatures for February 2025 from Ny-Ålesund observation station, Svalbard, elevation 8 m, established in July 1974. Our teams are working in Ny-Ålesund to study glacial and terrestrial microbial communities and their role in carbon and other elemental cycles during the dark, frozen, winter period, for which data remains scarce 10. Wintertime warming and rain turned Ny-Ålesund and the surrounding landscape into a melting ice rink, disrupting planned sampling efforts, forcing adaptations in methodologies, provoking new scientific questions, and raising concerns about the long-term feasibility of our winter research practices and logistics under increasingly variable conditions and rising temperatures.
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