Climate change thaws world's northernmost research station

Kings Bay AS contractors replace the foundation of Butikken building, the town store, after it was damaged by thawing permafrost in Ny-Aalesund, Svalbard, Norway, April 5, 2023. Within the last decade, four buildings have been damaged by thawing permafrost, and last year Kings Bay SA, the state-owned company that manages the town, had to close down a laboratory where scientists processed samples from fish snow and ice due to thaw cracking its foundation. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

At the world's northernmost year-round research station, scientists are racing to understand how the fastest-warming place on Earth is changing – and what those changes may mean for the planet's future.

But around the tiny town of Ny-Aalesund, high above the Arctic circle on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, scientific data is getting harder to access. And sometimes it's vanishing before scientists can collect it.