'This glacier is terminally ill' Time running out to learn from ice-dwelling microbes

It felt really scary... like being in the middle of a burning city during a night raid."

- Ben Martynoga

Dr Arwyn Edwards is describing not urban warfare, but a recent hot and foggy day on a Svalbard glacier, where record-breaking summer heat turned his workplace into a cascade of meltwater and falling rocks.

Edwards is a leading researcher in glacier ecology – the study of life forms that live on, within and around glaciers and ice sheets. Over two decades of polar research, he has always felt "relaxed and at home" on ice. But accelerating climate change is beginning to erode that sense of security. While mean global temperatures have not yet breached the 1.5C Paris target, the Arctic blew past that landmark long ago. Svalbard is heating seven times faster than the world average.

Time is running out to learn about these fragile ecosystems and the trillions of dollars in climate costs they could unleash.

Edwards describes the cold-adapted microbes he studies as "the watchkeepers and arch-agitators of Arctic demise." Recent research implicates snow and ice-dwelling microbes in positive feedback loops that can accelerate melting. With more than 70% of the planet's freshwater stored in ice and snow – and billions of lives sustained by glacier-fed rivers – this has consequences everywhere.

Yet not all polar microbes amplify global heating. Emerging evidence suggests that certain populations are, for now, applying a brake to methane emissions.

Until recent decades, most scientists assumed Arctic ice and snow were largely devoid of life. On Longyearbyen, a Svalbard glacier close to the world's most northerly town, Edwards explains how that assumption missed the mark.

Frozen rainforests