When you purchase through links on our website , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
Where is it?The Severnaya Zemlya archipelago , Russia . [ 79.931612 , 94.137378 ] .
What ’s in the photo?Ringed ice caps spanning three different island .
A trio of striking ice caps perched on three different islands in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.
Which orbiter postulate the photo?Landsat 8 .
When was it taken?August 9 , 2018 .
This arresting orbiter image shows a triple of barren island in the Russian Arctic , offering a uncommon glimpse at the colorful , concentric rings of the region ’s ever - present Methedrine chapiter .
The island’s ice caps have striking multicolor rings when viewed from above.
The Severnaya Zemlya archipelago is a collection of Russian - owned island in the Arctic Ocean that cut through around 14,300 square mil ( 37,000 straight kilometers ) — around the same size as Maryland — beyond Siberia ’s northernmost coastline . The archipelago baby-sit along the boundary between the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea and has four main landmasses : Komsomolets Island , Pioneer Island , October Revolution Island and Bolshevik Island .
The region was only unwrap in 1913 and was not properly gossip until a yoke decades afterwards , making it one of the last of Earth ’s major archipelagos to be properly mapped , according toEncyclopedia Britannica .
This pic shows the carrefour between Komsomolets Island ( meat ) , Pioneer Island ( left ) and October Revolution Island ( right ) , which are classify by just a few miles of sea , accord toNASA ’s Earth Observatory .
For most of the yr , these island are largely covered by ice and snow and are link to one another by thick sea deoxyephedrine . But for around two months every summer , temperature creep above freezing , enabling some of the frozen water system to melt away , which uncover the barren landscape painting below . The only thing that live there are lichen and a few George Herbert Walker Bush .
The boneheaded and oldest ice remains during the summer month , in the form of glaciers and hill - regulate ice caps that cut across around half of the archipelago ’s control surface .
Related:12 amazing images of Earth from infinite
The chalk cap , which can pass up to 820 feet ( 250 meters ) tall , are made up of multi - year ice , intend that extra bed of Baron Snow of Leicester are compacted into their icy summits every wintertime while they also lose ice rink to the summer melt . When take in from above , this bike of melting and refreezing creates the arresting concentric ring of colour seen in this paradigm , according toNASA ’s Earth Observatory .
The Severnaya Zemlya archipelago is also home to Russia ’s large glacier , the Academy of Sciences Glacier , which is turn up to the north of the photographed ice cap on Komsomolets Island . This mammoth internal-combustion engine great deal covers roughly 2,150 straight miles ( 5,570 square klick ) , which is around two - thirds of the island ’s airfoil .
— Mysterious wave ripples across ' extragalactic nebula ' of icebergs in Arctic fjord
— rarified phenomenon transmute African electrical storm into jumbo ethereal ' jellyfish '
— Majestic ' yin - yang ' volcanic crater sits atop a sleeping volcano in Turkey
However , the archipelago ’s year - round ice is slow melt thanks to human - causedclimate change . A2023 studyrevealed that between 1965 and 2021 , the realm ’s glaciers shrank by around 5 % , with a similar reduction predicted for the surrounding ice caps .
This pace of trash loss will in all likelihood increase in the future asprojected warming takes us past irreversible tipping level .
