The press service of the Russian Geographical Society has shared an interesting observation made by schoolchildren and students from the interregional project group "RISKSAT". By comparing satellite images of Franz Josef Land, they discovered that Mesyatsev Island, which was recently a cape, has completely disappeared.
The island formed from the peninsula of the same name as a result of the melting of a glacier on Eva-Liv Island before 1995. This fact was confirmed in 2018 by the expedition of the "Arctic Archipelagos" project and in 2021 by employees of the "Russian Arctic" national park.
Observations of this object lasted several years. As of August 19, 2015, the area of Mesyatsev Island was about 53 hectares, on August 12, 2024, a satellite image showed a small ice island of 3 hectares. A month later, the island completely disappeared from the images.
Now scientists will have to conduct additional research to finally confirm the disappearance of Mesyatsev Island and identify possible changes in the seabed relief. In addition, navigation charts will need to be corrected to organize the movement of ships in the area of the Franz Josef Land archipelago.
The "RISKSAT" group worked with satellite images from archives of open remote sensing data of the Earth. Schoolchildren and students have the opportunity to study information processing technologies for research projects on a wide variety of topics related to ecology, environmental protection, the consequences of accidents and emergencies.
Reflecting on the reasons for the disappearance of the island, the group put forward the following hypothesis: in the Arctic regions, global warming leads to the melting of glaciers and rising sea levels. This causes coastal erosion and, as a result, the disappearance of some landforms.
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