Minor Threat

Everyone has seen Ice Age and who doesn’t love that movie when poor Zid is denied his nut because it’s frozen inside an ice cube?

- Kari Shibevaag 

The world’s climate is changing, it has always changed, and whether or not everyone agrees on the cause, this is an easily measured fact. Last summer, Norway was often sizzling in higher temperatures than Spain. That is not normal if we look at the climate history of Norway. 30 degrees sustained over several months is not normal for Norway. For sure all of us loved it, but you couldn’t help feeling that something, somewhere had gone wrong.

The North Pole was experiencing sudden temperature spikes of 20 degrees above the expected temperatures, and the sea ice around Svalbard was diminished compared to previous years, making it difficult for the indigenous polar bears to find seals, their primary food source. The stark contrasts in the Arctic unequivocally show the effects of these temperature rises, but we also feel the effects further south.

In the southern regions of Scandinavia we love it when the sun is shining, and we can SUP in just a short wetsuit, shorts or bikini. Before, we had to travel south to get long, hot sunny spells of weather. We also love it when the snow blankets the land and we can enjoy a proper winter. The classic winter days when the snow is always there, the winter cold and long. But now, the winter is also changing. This winter we’ve seen temperatures swinging wildly from over 10 degrees to – 20. Sudden dumps of up to two meters of snow in one night, and then just a few days later, it’s raining. I think the winter makes us see the anomalies clearer when you have green grass in January and then two metres of powder just outside your front door in the same week. When I was in Canada, they were experiencing the same wild swings of –20 degrees and powder, then rain in the same week.