Retreat and volume loss of two rapidly vanishing Svalbard glaciers since 1938: Elsabreen and Ferdinandbreen, Petuniabukta
2026
Rebecca McCerery | Harold Lovell | Owen King | Bethan J. Davies | Jakub Małecki | Clare Boston | John Woodward | Jonathan L. Carrivick
The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth. The High Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard contains over 1500 glaciers that have, overall, experienced widespread thinning and recession since the Little Ice Age (LIA; ∼1900 CE), and this recession has accelerated since 1990. Here, we showcase the terminal decline since the end of the LIA of Elsabreen and Ferdinandbreen, two small land-terminating glaciers in Petuniabukta, Dickson Land. We map glacier areal extents using previously published data, aerial photographs and satellite imagery (LIA to 2024) and derive ice volume changes by differencing digital elevation models (1938 to 2023). Both glaciers have lost over 93% of their glacier area since the LIA and over 96% of their ice volume since 1938. By 2024, Elsabreen had reduced to a small glacier remnant with little evidence of ice flow, and Ferdinandbreen had fragmented into several separate ice units and completely detached from its original accumulation areas. Both of these vanishing glaciers merit inclusion on the Global Glacier Casualty List.
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