The Arctic Got So Warm in February, Svalbard’s Ground Was ‘Like Soft Ice Cream’
The Arctic island of Svalbard is so reliably frigid that humanity bet its future on the place. Since 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault—set deep in frozen soil known as permafrost—has accepted nearly 1.4 million samples of more than 6,000 species of critical crops. But the island is warming six to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, making even winters freakishly hot, at least by Arctic standards. Indeed, in 2017, an access tunnel to the vault flooded as permafrost melted, though t