Greenland expedition discovers “the northernmost island in the world” | Globalism

“Our intention was not to discover a new island,” Danish explorer Morten Rasch told Reuters news agency. “We just went there to collect samples.”

The small island with a width of 30 meters appeared due to movement in the Arctic ice sheet. It is three meters high and is formed by the accumulation of mud and sediment that broke off from the glaciers.

At first, scientists thought that they had reached Oodaaq Island – an island that was discovered in 1978. And only then, upon checking the exact location, did they realize that they had visited another island, 780 meters away, in a northwesterly direction.

Christian Lister, one of the funders of the expedition, celebrated the discovery and said it felt like “explorers of the past”, who thought they had gotten somewhere, but had found a “completely different” place.

The researchers decided to call the island qrtak afnarlq, which means “the northernmost island” in the local language. To become part of Greenland, the Danish government still needed to recognize the area, which could be done if the island remained visible even at high tide.

Although it was revealed by the displacement of the ice sheet, scientists said that the appearance of the island is not a direct result of global warming, which has led to a decrease in the Greenland ice sheet.

Last month, a heat wave in the Arctic, with temperatures more than 10°C higher than expected for this time of year, triggered an episode of massive melting of the ice sheet covering the region.

Between July 28 and 31, the ice sheet melted at about 8 billion tons per day, twice the average summer rate, according to data from Polar Portal, a modeling tool operated by Danish research institutes.

Rene Forsberg, a geophysics expert at Denmark’s National Space Institute, told Reuters qrtak afnarlq, at this time, could be considered the “northern land of the world” point, but this may not be definitive.

“It meets island standards. The world said this is the northernmost landmass in the world right now, but these little islands come and go.

He also explained that the entire region north of Greenland is covered in a thick layer of polar ice – it can reach 3 meters in height during the summer. In 1978, when Oodaaq was discovered, the ice sheet reached 4 metres.

The discovery comes as the Arctic nations – the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway – begin to fight for control of the region.

This is because, as part of the Arctic is melting due to climate change, new navigation routes and fishing grounds are beginning to emerge.

Several American missions, for example, have been searching for new areas in recent decades. In 2007, an island similar to qrtak afnarlq It was found by explorers.