Warming In Svalbard 7X Global Average; Glaciers' Melt Powered In Part By Rich Microbial Ecosystem Within Them

“It felt really scary … like being in the middle of a burning city during a night raid.” Dr Arwyn Edwards is not describing urban warfare but a recent hot and foggy day on a Svalbard glacier, where record-breaking summer heat turned his workplace into a cascade of meltwater and falling rocks. Edwards is a leading researcher in glacier ecology – the study of life forms that live on, within and around glaciers and ice sheets. Over two decades of polar research, he has always felt “relaxed and at home” on ice. But the accelerating climate breakdown is beginning to erode that sense of security.

While mean global temperatures have not yet breached the 1.5C Paris target, the Arctic blew past that landmark long ago. Svalbard is heating seven times faster than the world average. Time is running out to understand these fragile ecosystems and the trillions of dollars in climate costs they could unleash.

Edwards describes the cold-adapted microbes he studies as “the watchkeepers and arch-agitators of Arctic demise”. Recent research implicates snow and ice-dwelling microbes in positive feedback loops that can accelerate melting. With more than 70% of the planet’s freshwater stored in ice and snow – and billions of lives sustained by glacier-fed rivers – this has profound implications everywhere. Yet not all polar microbes amplify global heating. Emerging evidence suggests that certain populations are – for now – applying a brake to methane emissions.

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Across the fjord from Longyearbyen, Prof Andy Hodson, of the University Centre in Svalbard, demonstrates this at a collection of “pingos” – mounds formed when pressurised groundwater surges upward through frozen ground. The water that emerges is saturated with methane. Hodson likens the effect to glaciers and ice “fracking the landscape and pushing this gas out. We’ve got methane pissing out the ground from wherever fluids can migrate from beneath the permafrost.” On cue, a sudden belch of methane disturbs the surface of a pingo pool. “I’m not going to say there’s a 50 petagram methane bomb about to go off,” Hodson says. But with recent estimates suggesting emissions from Arctic feedback loops could add $25-70tn to climate costs, the stakes couldn’t be higher. One reason Hodson remains relatively calm about this particular site is because he and colleagues discovered recently that specific microbial communities living in the pingo can out-compete methane-producing microbes and actively consume methane. “This is where the methanotrophs [‘methane eaters’] are really saving the day,” Hodson says. Methanotrophs will certainly not curtail emissions everywhere but without them, much more methane would escape.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/arctic-glaciers-face-terminal-decline-as-microbes-accelerate-ice-melt