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hatrack

(59,585 posts)
Sat Feb 23, 2019, 09:50 AM Feb 2019

Small Arctic Island Of Perlamutrovy, 1.5 Km In Diameter, Disappears Beneath Barents Sea

The island was located near the Graham Bell island in Franz Josef Land, the remote Russian Arctic archipelago, and had a name that means "the mother of pearls". It had a round shape and a diameter of 1,5 km. Its highest point was 22 meter above sea level. And it was all covered by a glacier.

That is now all history. The island of Perlamutrovy is simply gone, and nobody seems to know exactly what has happened. Russian researchers suspected the disappearance in 2017 when they failed to discover it on satellite photos. In summer of 2018, hydrographers from the Russian Northern Fleet during an expedition confirmed that the island is gone. On the site is now only open water, the researchers make clear.

EDIT

It is a natural phenomenon, national park director Kirilov argues. "For the Arctic, this kind of disappearance and appearance of islands is a natural process, it is related to climate change on the planet," he says. "There are many new findings made as the glaciers disappear, [and] it is quite likely that the outlines of the Franz Josef Land actually are far from the ones that are depicted on maps," Kirilov says.

The Franz Josef Land is located in the northern part of the Barents Sea, an area which is experiencing some of the biggest climate changes on the planet. Average temperatures in the area has hiked in only few years. According to Roshydromet, the Russian meteorological institute, the nearby Kara Sea has over the last 30 years experienced an average air temperature increase of as much as 4,95 C degrees.

EDIT

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/02/arctic-island-disappeared

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