"Catastrophic" retreat of glaciers in Spitsbergen

I’ve been given a report on glaciers and sea ice in the Arctic that I want to share with readers. There’s some compelling evidence of glacier melting and open water in the Arctic sea in this report that I haven’t seen before.

There are also worrisome reports of significant temperature increases, with anomalies of several degrees. Also in the report is the mention of ice free open sea of almost 2 million square kilometers, which is termed as “unprecendented in the history of the Arctic”.

It is shocking to read. I urge readers to have a look at some of the excerpts I’ve posted.

First a map. Spitsbergen is part of Svalbard, which is part of Norway.

From the page 471 above, except for the date, this language seems familiar:

Well, we all know what a warm year 1934 was.

Here’s a mention of some strong temperature anomalies, as much as 10 degrees.

Here we see some significant reduction in Arctic sea ice across broad areas:

Wind seems to be a factor in flushing out the Arctic basin.

Signs that the “warming is not terminating”. Oh, that has to be bad.

Here’s the book:

All of these reports about sea ice and melt seems familiar, except the date, which is 1943.

There’s also a fascinating discussion about linkages between sunspots and precipitation on pages starting on page 460.

You can view the entire book here at archive.org

Oh and here’s that mention of “unprecendented in the history of the Arctic” open water from page 470:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems from history that the Arctic ice is always going up or down. We can’t assume that our recent 2007 record sea ice minimum is something unique in the history of the Arctic ice.

And of course we’ve heard historical reports of a melting Arctic before, such as this one:

November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.

Big hat tip to Richard North of the E.U. Referendum, who alerted me to this book.