In the northernmost town on Earth. Average temperatures are up and
sea ice is declining. The Arctic town of long You're being sits in
a Norwegian island chain. And because of climate change, it's having
to adapt to longer summers and shorter, warmer winters. Special correspondent
John Beaver traveled there to meet some of the people living on the
front line of a changing world. Nestled between glaciers just 800
miles from the North Pole. Long year, bian is unlike anywhere else
on the planet. With temperatures just a few degrees above zero in
the winter for the 2900 people who live here, Life is an adventure.
But it's an adventure that's getting more dangerous to people died
when an avalanche hit the town in 2015. Many say they were the first
people here to be killed by climate change. Warmer weather can lead
to a less stable snowpack. Avalanches more common. I was pretty set
on working in the snow. Hancock came to Svalbard while studying at
Montana State University, the fastest warming town on Earth. And
I was on his contribution to work on detecting and predicting avalanches.
Is helping keep locals safe. There is now daily Avalanche hazard
forecasts written for town, which gives in kind of an overall picture
of where what the avalanche hazard. Maybe then there's these structural
mitigation measures that are put up on the slope in town, so all
of these things go together to kind of attempt to mitigate that risk.
So you obviously grew up around snow in Montana. Have you managed
to bring some of that Montana knowledge here to the Arctic Montana's
pretty cold and pretty windy in the winners as well. So despite that,
it said, a much lower latitude. A lot of those processes are still
the same. So some of that experience that you build up at, for instance,
a lower latitude or a different what we would call snow climate is
still applicable up here and by the same context we I hopefully,
some of the things that we learn up here are also going to be applicable
at a at a lower latitude. Setting living safely with polar bears
is not a problem that many other parts of the world have to deal
with. The town's museum is as close as most visitors get dwindling
sea ice is threatening the bears very existence and pushing them
further north to find suitable hunting grounds.
The weather here is now the biggest threat for many climate is warming
unless snow is falling. But like cool
weather events for getting worse and
start with nice things can end with incredibly harsh storms. Tonight's
windchill is negative 40 degrees.
Even so, long year being has that dubious honor of warming quicker
than anywhere else, but it's powered by coal.
For decades. This was a company town where coal was the only business.
But the global emissions from the very material that built the town
and now threatening its future. One working mind remains its planned
closure this year has been postponed until 2025 after the Russian
invasion of Ukraine drove coal prices up in Europe.
Tourism is the big business now
gave expeditions are one of the popular activities. But the glaciers
are melting at a record rate
about 10 M
service
guided our way through the labyrinthine structure and says he's worried
about how much longer activities like this will be possible.
I mean, I've been thinking about this for years and years and If
I were to walk around and worry, which I do, but I sort of have to
shut it off as well. Because otherwise it would just be too hard
Seeing that nothing is actually happening. And with this
I mean, if we are basing our lives on economic growth, that's what
we're getting, and I don't see anything changing soon, but I hope
Decades of conservation work has gone into trying to protect the
fragile ecosystem here, but there's only so much that can be done
locally to limit climate change. It's part of the Arctic is warming
around six times faster than the global average. Temperatures in
Svalbard are up four degrees Celsius. That's just over seven F in
the past 50 years trying to limit the impact of the 130,000 or so
annual visitors is high on the agenda here.
Companies invested in eight electric snowmobiles that recharged using
a wind turbine and solar panels on the office roof. It's a measure
that also being used elsewhere to try and help the environment as
well as appealing to more environmentally conscious tourists.
The climate emissions, crazy process living here and also for tourism.
It's it's not good. Broomball runs visits foul, barred the official
tourism board for the archipelago. He's attempting to balance towards
income with tourist impact to, uh and high Arctic archipelago. They
want to Be part of
Of tourists that don't leave any footprints, for instance, so the
company has to adapt to climate change, but also to changes in the
perspectives of the visitors. From early settlers wailing to mining
and now tourism life here has constantly had to adapt to survive.
But as the sun sets on an industry that's kept smile barred, prosperous
and warm. Climate change is something they can do little to prevent.
And it's the biggest challenge yet. For the PBS news hour John Beaver
in Longyearbyen, Svalbard.