Melting Glacier Gives Alaska a New Island

Alaska has gained an island without gaining any land. NASA satellite images reveal that the Alsek Glacier has retreated so far that a small mountain once surrounded by the glacier is now a 2-square mile island in Alsek Lake, Newsweek reports. The glacier has been retreating for decades and the separation from the mountain, known as Prow Knob, finally happened this summer, NASA says. The new island is in Glacier Bay National Park in the Alaska Panhandle.

Researchers say the two arms of the glacier that once encircled Prow Knob have both retreated more than 3 miles since 1984. Alsek Lake, meanwhile, almost doubled in size to around 30 square miles over the same period. "Along the coastal plain of southeastern Alaska, water is rapidly replacing ice," Lindsay Doermann writes at the NASA Earth Observatory. "Glaciers in this area are thinning and retreating, with meltwater forming proglacial lakes off their fronts. In one of these growing watery expanses, a new island has emerged."