Catherine Hyland, The fastest warming town on earth for Wired

Catherine has recently worked on this commission for Wired: Svalbard is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet. The polar ice cap that used to creep down and encircle the islands each winter, cutting them off from the outside world, is shrinking at an unprecedented rate, with 2020 set to be one of the worst years on record, according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. In October, it reported that almost four million more kilometers of ice were missing compared to what was common in the 80s – an area ten times the size of Norway. As Kim Holmén, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, explains over video call: “The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Within the Arctic, the area that is warming the most – almost twice as fast as the average for the Arctic – is Svalbard.” Tristan Kennedy, Wired.