How Climate Change Science Has Changed Due to COVID-19 Restrictions
July 14, 2021 at 08:00PM In late 2019, expeditioners and guides Hilde Falun and Sunniva Sorby went to Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago to complete a long-term goal of being the first female team to over winter in the Arctic. But the pair’s planned return home to mainland Norway coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and pretty quickly they found themselves stranded. There had been plans for a ship carrying friends and family to come and collect them as the ice began to melt in March, but travel restrictions got in the way, and they couldn’t come home until September. So instead, they spent the winter and much of spring up until May in an isolated, tiny wooden hut high up in the Arctic circle, surrounded by winter darkness. There was a definite upside, though, at least for the global scientific community: just as the two were stuck in Svalbard, fieldwork by climate scientists and researchers came to a standstill, as those who would normally travel to the Arctic ...