The hydrographer reported on the possible appearance of new islands in the Arctic

New islands may form in the coming years in the area of the archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land due to the retreat of glaciers. This was announced on September 22 by Andrey Leonov, Associate Professor of the Department of Marine Hydrography at the Arctic Faculty of the Institute "Marine Academy" of the GUMRF.

"The two archipelagos that we are currently looking at very carefully are Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. We can say that it is there that we are waiting for the "birth" of new islands. However, nature does not allow us to make a one hundred percent forecast," Leonov said in an interview with "RIA Novosti".

According to him, climatic changes and the retreat of the ice front are exposing land areas that have been under glaciers for a long time. Scientists monitor the changes using satellite images, among other things.

At the same time, the newly formed land areas do not always remain islands. Leonov cited the example of the island of Mesyatsev, which was originally considered a cape, then was designated as an island, and in 2024 completely disappeared. The researchers concluded that the object was an ice formation.

In other cases, after the retreat of the glacier, the new island may eventually connect to the land by a sandy bridge and turn into a peninsula.

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On August 26, the founder of the Kazakh travel company Caspian Holiday, Yerbolat Mukhashov, said that new land areas began to appear in the north of the Caspian Sea due to the retreat of water. According to him, one of these sites is Rybachy Island, which is located 500 km east of Svyatoy Island.