Overview

• Svalbard lost 61.7 ± 11.1 gigatons of land ice—about 1% of its total—mostly from surface melting, adding roughly 0.16 mm to global sea level.
• Across the wider circum-Barents region, ice loss reached 102.1 ± 22.9 gigatons in 2024, contributing 0.27 ± 0.06 mm to sea-level rise.
• Most of the loss occurred within six weeks during a marine heatwave, with August averaging about 11°C versus ~7°C in recent decades and nearby seas 3.5–5°C above the 1991–2020 baseline.
• Researchers combined stake measurements, satellite remote sensing and CryoGrid modeling; a record 16 mm of land uplift at one site corroborated the mass-loss estimate.
• The study attributes the event to record air temperatures and anomalously warm seas and projects that such summers will become common by mid-to-late century, even under low-emissions scenarios.