We forgot the sunscreen...
The East Coast has been starved for rain this spring, and gardens everywhere are suffering (including mine!). Good news, though: we're flipping the script. The pattern is shifting to a rainy one for the drought-parched East and Southeast, along with some cooler temps.
I've got something special for you today. Bill Weir, our climate chief, is in Svalbard this month to talk to scientists and get a first-hand look at how the Arctic is changing. I'll be sharing dispatches with you as he travels.
—Angela Fritz, Meteorologist
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A dispatch from Bill Weir, Chief Climate Correspondent
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“Damn, I forgot sunscreen,” should not be my main packing regret this high in the Arctic this early in the year, but here we are.
I’m sitting in shirtsleeves on a floating dock in Svalbard, Norway, and I’m surrounded by signs of our overheating planet. The spring thaw has arrived over a month early, so fleets of snowmobiles and dog sleds sit parked in the mud, and instead of journeys into frozen wonderlands, I watch tourists take boat rides.
On the hillside to my right, gushing meltwater flows beneath relics of the coal mines recently closed in a green energy transition, while to my left, a Norse warship is making a rare appearance at Longyearbyen as Russian aggression and Donald Trump’s fixation with Greenland make the Arctic a hotspot in more ways than one.
Svalbard is heating seven times faster than the rest of the globe, and disappearing ice has created entirely new shipping channels along with a wave of speculators hoping to mine land and seafloor for the metals to run the future.
I’m about to board the MS Freya, a Swedish ship fortified to navigate the ice, but there is no telling how far we’ll have to sail to find it.
Stay tuned.
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A polar bear stands on sea ice near Norway’s Svalbard archipelago on April 27. (Julian Quinones/CNN)
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Bill is a wandering storyteller who seeks out and brings to life the planet’s most fragile, beautiful places. |
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Angela is grateful for the recent rain in the DC area.
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