Satellite images reveal that Mesyatsev Island, which is a large ice sheet in the Arctic, may have completely melted due to climate change.
Mesyatsev Island, actually an iceberg separated from Eva-Liv Island, floating in the sea. Image: Alexandra Barymova/Marine Research Center of Lomonosov Moscow University
A group of schoolchildren and university students discovered the disappearance of Russia’s Mesyatsev Island in the Arctic while comparing satellite images of the area for the Moscow Aviation Institute’s RISKSAT educational project, Live Science reported on November 8.
Mesyatsev Island is a patch of ice and dust located near the larger Eva-Liv island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago – a Russian archipelago of about 190 islands in the Arctic Ocean. This small island was once an ice cape attached to its larger “neighbor” Eva-Liv, but may have separated before 1985, according to a study published in the journal Geosciences year 2019.
In 2010, Mesyatsev Island had a surface area of about 1.1 million square meters – equivalent to about 20 American football fields. However, when reviewing a new series of satellite images taken on August 12, 2024, the group of students found that the island is only 30,000 m2, a decrease of more than 99.7% compared to 14 years ago. By September 3, newer images showed that the island had completely disappeared, according to the Russian Geographical Society. The students compared satellite images as part of the RISKSAT project managed by the Moscow Aviation Institute.
The cause of the island’s disappearance may be rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change, according to Alexey Kucheiko, a researcher at the Moscow Aviation Institute. “The island has completely melted,” he said.
Satellite photos taken on August 19, 2015 (left) and September 13, 2024 (right) show the disappearance of Mesyatsev Island. Image: Russian Geographical Society/RISKSAT
Mesyatsev Island has been melting since separating from Eva-Liv, but the rate of melting has increased over the past decade. In 2015, the island’s area was measured at about 530,000 m2, less than half of the total area in 2010. By 2022, the island had shrunk so much that researchers stopped monitoring it because they thought it would soon disappear. Therefore, the fact that the island was still present in the satellite images that the students observed in August this year surprised them.
Researchers aren’t sure why the island persisted longer than expected. However, one theory is that the dust layer above the island may have been swept away by waves or rainwater, helping it slow down its melting rate. This dust layer caused the island to darken in 2021, thereby absorbing more solar radiation. The dust could have been blown to the island, or released from melting ice.