Four Swedish glaciers have completely melted in just four years. Glaciers are melting as a result of global warming.
Sweden’s glaciers have melted at an alarming rate in just four years, says the person responsible for mapping Sweden Survey of Lantmäteret.
The report has been reported on, for example Swedish public broadcasting company SVT.
According to the report, since 2020, four glaciers have completely melted into non-existence. In total, at least four square kilometers of ice has melted from the glaciers.
For example, in the Artfjället mountains in Västerbotten, there was a six-meter snowfield that had existed for 2,500 years. This year it almost completely disappeared.
In the pictures below, you can compare how the snow field has changed from 2014 to 2024.
Since 2008, 18 square kilometers of ice have melted from the glaciers. It corresponds to the area of about 2,500 football fields.
The country’s largest glacier, Sálajiegŋa, has also shrunk considerably. It can be seen, for example, from Lantmäteriet’s satellite images.
Glaciers are melting as a result of global warming.
– These lost areas are huge. It’s unfathomable. We see more and more glaciers collapsing and disintegrating, says the mapping engineer Björn Olander From Lantmäteriet to SVT.
Researcher at Umeå University Ylva Sjöberg tells SVT that the melting of glaciers can significantly affect how much water, for example, local plants have.
According to Lantmäteriet, there are about 280 glaciers in Sweden. Most of them are located in northern Sweden in Norrbotten county, near the border between Sweden and Norway.