An entire island has disappeared in the Russian Arctic

In the area of Eva-Liv island of the Franz Josef Land archipelago in The Arctic ice formation — the island of Mesyatsev - has disappeared. This is stated in the message of the RGS (Russian Geographical Society).

According to satellite imagery, the island of Mesyatseva was formed from the peninsula of the same name as a result of the melting of the glacier on the island of Eva-Liv before 1995.

"We followed him in 2020-2022. Now the island has completely melted, which requires correction of navigation maps," said Associate Professor of MAI, Candidate of Technical Sciences Alexey Kucheiko. The island was observed by the interregional project group RISKSAT headed by him.

Initially, the island was the cape of the Month, gradually its area was reduced, and in the summer of 2021 its surface changed color from the usual white to dark.

As of August 19, 2015, the area of the island of Mesyatsev was about 53 hectares, on August 12, 2024, a small ice island measuring 3 hectares was recorded in the picture. A month later — on September 13, 2024 — the island finally disappeared from the pictures.

"We discovered the disappearance of the island in the process of completing the practical task "Calculating the change in areas from a different pair of satellite images", the purpose of which was to study the consequences of climate change in The Arctic zone of Russia in recent years," explained the students of the Institute No. 6 "Aerospace" MAI.

Explaining the reasons for the disappearance of the island, the RISKSAT group hypothesized that in the Arctic regions, climate warming leads to the melting of glaciers and sea level rise. This causes erosion of the coastline and, as a result, the disappearance of some landforms.

In the future, it is necessary to conduct additional studies to finally confirm the disappearance of the island of Mesyatsev and identify possible changes in the relief of the seabed.