A Consolation Prize

by David Pidgeon

This image, which is a decent enough photograph, was still unable to capture just how beautiful and immense Templefjordan actually is. Certainly without any trees it is hard for our brains to understand the true scale of the place. But what you see here, from the point I’m standing up to the snout of the distant glacier, Tunabreen, is more than 8km. It really is an enormous arena.

The photograph was taken after a failed attempt to reach an ice pit the ARG had first excavated more than forty years ago on almost the same July date, which would have allowed for a direct comparison of snow accumulation and atmospheric chemistry through time. But over those decades, Svalbard has warmed at roughly four times the global average. Landscapes once mapped as stable glacier surfaces have massively degraded.

Our team of three had sludged upwards earlier that day, roped together across the upper slope of Brucebreen, which is out of shot and a few kilometres to the left, behind a high wall of rock. Initially things seemed fine, but we were forced back because meltwater had hollowed complex and dangerous drainage systems beneath a thin layer of snow. It’s painful after so much planning and effort to call it quits, but the risks aren’t worth it.

Earlier in the expedition the team had tried to make it to another site up by Von Post Breen, further north and to the top right of this image, but was similarly forced to turn back. Instead of stable ice to move over, there is now loose and unpredictable ground, often cut through with fast flowing meltwater. A third attempt up Brucebreen also failed. 

Of course, we considered alternative routes and different strategies, and perhaps with more time and effort we would have been successful. These places are not impossible to reach now in summer, but they have vastly changed over the last 40 years and the expedition team in the early 80s would have had a very different experience. 

But expeditions are tightly run and there was much more the 2025 team was committed to doing, and doing so without putting people in any danger. Still, our experience is worth understanding for what it is; these failed attempts are part of the story about the potential end of the Arctic’s glaciers. 

They certainly remain immense and dynamic systems, shaping landscapes and ecosystems through erosion, sediment transport and the release of freshwater into surrounding seas. But they are retreating before our eyes. As they withdraw, newly uncovered valleys are filling with braided rivers and expanding deltas. In some locations, beyond Templefjordan, seawater is advancing inland as tidewater glacier fronts collapse and retreat. Often, icebergs do not make it out to sea; instead they melt inland locking freshwater into newly formed ecosystems.

These outcomes, which are not well understood, are what I have been speaking with scientists about ever since my return. An interesting picture is emerging — not necessarily one of ecosystem collapse, but certainly one enormous change — potentially even a return to something that was present in the recent past, at least geologically speaking. 

Like my feature in BBC Wildlife Magazine which examined Arctic pingos — amazing geomorphic curiosities with an important link to climate science — I am in the process of writing an in-depth article on the future of Arctic ecosystems. It’s a rare experience to visit places like Svalbard, particularly as a writer able to participate directly in scientific research, but it’s also important to share what is learned. Watch this space.

As for the image I took after our failed attempt to reach our ice pit, I consider it something of a consolation prize. In the Arctic summer, of course, the sun never sets. But it still moves about the sky and changes the colour perception of the landscape. During this moment, it was such a lush gold it felt like magic and I was pleased my rather ho-hum camera was able to capture at least a sense of it.

David Pidgeon