USA TODAY International Edition
World’s most northerly town on verge of vanishing
Norwegians fear cataclysm from climate change
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway – It’s freezing, snowing and so far north that the sun won’t rise again until March, but the 2,000 residents of the world’s most northerly town wish it were much colder.
The weather on Norway’s Arctic Circle island of Svalbard is tame in comparison with what it should be, despite the icy breeze that flows in from the sea.
Residents and experts fear this tightknit community — where polar bears outnumber people — is at risk of disappearing because temperatures are rising at an accelerated pace compared with the rest of the world.
“Every single consecutive month has been above average,” said Kim Holmén, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute. “We have tremendous increase in the wintertime temperatures, almost 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) increase over the past 30 years or so.
“Wherever I look, there is change, very obvious change. The snow melts earlier in the spring, the glaciers are diminishing by a foot, 2 feet per year in thickness,” Holmén said from the Svalbard Science Center. “It influences life, it influences the landscape, and it influences the people, of course.”
Melting permafrost and higher temperatures have caused havoc in recent years, triggering deadly avalanches on the steep mountains that flank the town. Houses have been destroyed, and roads and some areas have been closed or declared unsafe.
Within the past two years, hundreds of residents have been affected, some having to evacuate their homes.
Mark Sabbatini, 49, a journalist, said he lost his apartment because the melting permafrost created dangerous cracks in the foundation. Sabbatini, originally from Alaska, said he is bankrupt.
“We lost the whole value of the apartment, with no insurance compensation or any compensation. We had people who were left broke and had to leave the island, people like me who’ve been left bankrupt and living off borrowed funds and begging — literally begging at times — for just barely enough money to stay alive,” he said.
The region saw an “amplification” of global warming, said Arctic climate expert David Barber of the University of Manitoba. He warned that projections predict “profound effects on the physics, biology and geochemistry of the Arctic.”
Uncertainty about global warming and how it could transform Longyearbyen and the surrounding fragile landscape plagues this community.
“There are some people who didn’t want to move back into homes that were hit by avalanches,” Sabbatini said. “There are folks who are finding all the uncertainty about the town’s economic future hard as well — I’m certainly among them.”
Longyearbyen, a former mining town established in 1906 by American businessman John Munro Longyear, has diversified its economy in recent years, profiting from adventurous tourists as well as researchers studying the Arctic.
The changing conditions could put these economic developments at risk.
“At Scott Turner Glacier, where we do our ice cave tours, we see from year to year how fast the ice is melting,” said Martin Munck, founder of the Green Dog tour company in Svalbard. “If worstcase scenario comes, and there is no snow during winter ... I doubt anyone would like to live here. No tourism and four dark months, with no light-reflecting white snow and no way to go out on tours.”
The island has no indigenous population, and Longyearbyen is mainly filled with migrants from mainland Norway, neighboring Scandinavian countries and Thailand. The community of misfits from around the world is concerned that people might not want to stay as more parts of town become unsafe and life invariably gets tougher.
There’s a clear pride in living in such an isolated and unique part of the world, which helps foster the town’s spirit that transforms the dark, winter months into a period of cozy community gatherings and communal projects.
Though people in other far north communities struggle with seasonal affective disorder — a winter depression from little sunlight — the illness is rarely seen in Longyearbyen.
There is frustration and anger over expectations that the annual average temperature of Longyearbyen will reach above freezing in the next year or two — a phenomenon never seen in the town’s recorded history.
“Man has changed the atmosphere,” Holmén lamented. “There are many people I hear now who are discussing moving down (to mainland Norway). But (Longyearbyen) is still a place that many newcomers find extremely attractive, and many fall in love with it. It is resilient.”