Komsomolets Island

Komsomolets Island is the northernmost island of Russia’s Severnaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Its landscape is dominated by glaciers and an ice cap.

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Severnaya Zemlya: A Russian Arctic archipelago between the Kara Sea and Laptev Sea. Komsomolets is the archipelago’s northernmost island.
Academy of Sciences Glacier: A large ice cap covering much of Komsomolets Island. It dominates the island’s surface and feeds outlet glaciers.
Georgy Ushakov: A Soviet polar explorer who led the 1930–1932 expedition that mapped Severnaya Zemlya. His expedition brought the archipelago, including Komsomolets, into detailed maps.
Glaciology: The scientific study of glaciers, ice sheets, and their interactions with the environment. Its ice cap provides a major subject for studying Arctic glaciers.
Arctic Ocean: The ocean surrounding the Arctic region, largely enclosed by northern landmasses. The island lies in its central Arctic waters.
Ice cap: A dome-shaped mass of ice covering less than 50,000 square kilometres of land. The island’s glacier forms an extensive ice cap.
Nikolay Urvantsev: A Soviet geologist and Arctic explorer who helped map Severnaya Zemlya in the early 1930s. He worked with Ushakov on the expedition that surveyed the island group.
Ice-core paleoclimatology: The reconstruction of past climates from chemical and physical records preserved in ice cores. Ice from the island can preserve evidence of past Arctic conditions.
Kara Sea: A marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It borders Severnaya Zemlya to the west.
Glacier: A persistent body of land ice that moves under its own weight. Glacial ice shapes much of Komsomolets Island.