In recent decades, scientists are increasingly talking about the climate crisis and its consequences for the planet.. The world is already facing higher temperatures and extreme weather events, but not all regions of the Earth are warming at the same rate. For example, it is known that since 1979 the Arctic has been warming almost four times faster than the average for the entire globe, writes Science Alert.

Svalbard is an archipelago off the northeast coast of Greenland and is, unfortunately, on the front lines of climate change, warming 7 times faster than the rest of the world.. More than half of the archipelago is covered by glaciers, and their complete loss, according to scientists, would lead to a rise in global sea levels by 1.7 centimeters. Fortunately, this won't happen overnight, but the glaciers in the Arctic are indeed quite vulnerable to a warming world.

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In a new study, scientists sought to better understand glaciers in Svalbard and beyond.. The team used an AI model to analyze millions of satellite images of the archipelago taken over the past four decades. The team's results found something particularly alarming: Local glaciers are shrinking faster than ever..

According to Jonathan Bamber, professor of glaciology and Earth observation at the University of Bristol, he and his colleagues looked at glaciers flowing directly into the ocean. Note that these glaciers are also known as those that " Most of Svalbard's glaciers fit into this category and act as an ecological pump on the fjords into which they flow, transporting nutrient-rich seawater to the ocean surface. Previously, scientists also found that these glaciers are capable of changing ocean circulation patterns..

Where glaciers meet the sea, they mostly lose mass through iceberg calving, a process in which large chunks of ice break off from the glacier and fall into the ocean. The team believes that understanding this process is key to more accurately predicting future glacier mass loss, as calving could lead to faster movement of ice within the glacier itself and ultimately into the sea.

Despite the importance of this process, understanding it has still remained a challenge for glaciologists, since the process itself is extremely difficult to observe and also to model. According to Professor Bamber, to resolve this issue, he and his colleagues used the past..

Previously, during glacier research, people painstakingly studied satellite photos of glaciers to analyze the boundaries between ice and ocean. But in the new work, scientists used AI: artificial intelligence analyzed millions of satellite images of 149 glaciers ending in the seas. All photos were taken between 1985 and 2023, meaning glacier retreat has been studied on an unprecedented scale and scope..

The results show that 91% of glaciers that end in the sea have shrunk significantly across the archipelago. More than 800 km have been lost since 1985? ice, which is equivalent to an annual loss of 24 km? per year.

The biggest spike was recorded in 2016, when calving rates doubled in response to periods of extreme warming. That year also saw Svalbard's wettest summer and autumn since 1955, including a record 42mm of rain in one day in October. This was accompanied by unusually warm and ice-free seas.

Note that in addition to long-term retreat, these glaciers retreat annually in summer and advance again in winter, often by several hundred meters. But now, scientists have discovered something alarming: 62% of Svalbard's glaciers experience these seasonal cycles. Although this phenomenon is well documented in Greenland, it has previously only been observed for a few glaciers on Svalbard, mostly through manual digitization.

The study authors also compared seasonal changes in glaciers with seasonal fluctuations in air and ocean temperatures.. The results indicate that as the ocean warmed in the spring, the glacier retreated almost immediately. Essentially, it's a good demonstration of what scientists have long suspected: seasonal tides are caused by changes in ocean temperatures..

Another co-author of the study, Tian Li, a senior research fellow at the University of Bristol, said the results indicate that sea glaciers are extremely sensitive to extreme climate events, with the fastest rates of retreat observed in recent years and coinciding with extreme heat waves on Earth.

The same type of glaciers can be found throughout the Arctic and in particular around Greenland, the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere. What's happening to glaciers in Svalbard is likely to happen elsewhere.

Previously, Focus wrote that something was breaking off huge chunks of ice from Antarctica.