A team of experts has been monitoring the Franz Josef Islands of Russia through satellite images since 2020 and has discovered that Mesyatsev Island, covering an area of 53 hectares, has completely disappeared.
According to a reporter in Moscow, on October 31, the Russian Geographical Society announced that Mesyatsev Island has vanished from the Franz Josef Islands in the Arctic.
The team, led by Associate Professor-PhD in Technical Sciences Alexey Kucheiko, has tracked this archipelago using satellite imagery since 2020 and found that this 53-hectare frozen territory has entirely disappeared.
Ice melting due to warm temperatures in the Arctic. (Photo: AFP/TTXVN).
This gradual disappearance has been warned about by the team since 2020, and now the navigational maps for vessels in this area will need to be adjusted.
Mesyatsev Island formed from a peninsula of the same name due to melting ice on Eva-Liv Island prior to 1995.
Expedition teams in the Arctic archipelago in 2018 and staff from the “Russian Arctic” National Park in 2021 confirmed this occurrence.
As of August 19, 2015, Mesyatsev Island covered an area of 53 hectares, but by August 12, 2024, satellite images indicated that the island’s area had shrunk to just 3 hectares.
One month later, on September 13, 2024, the island had completely disappeared from the photographs.
Calculations suggest that Mesyatsev Island has been melting at a rate of about 5-13 hectares per year. The missing island is located near Great Eva-Liv, one of the northernmost islands in this archipelago.
The researchers attribute the disappearance of the island to warming in the Arctic, which causes glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. This leads to erosion and the eventual disappearance of certain landforms.
The team of experts emphasized that they will conduct further research to confirm the disappearance of Mesyatsev Island and identify potential changes.
