Meadow island
| Meadow island | |
|---|---|
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| Waters | Kara Sea |
| Geographical location | 79 ° 33 ' N , 76 ° 56' E |
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| length | 35.3 km |
| width | 10.7 km |
| surface | 288 km² |
| Highest elevation | 22 m |
| Residents | uninhabited |
The Meadow Island ( Russian Остров Визе / Ostrow Wise ; also Земля Визе / Semlja Wise , on English-language maps Vize Island ) is a 288 km² Russian island isolated in the Arctic Ocean in the northern part of the Kara Sea . The Soviet oceanographer Vladimir Wiese had predicted unknown land in the northern Kara Sea six years before it was discovered after analyzing the drift of the schooner St. Anna of Georgi Brusilov's polar expedition . That is why the island was named after him.
geography
The meadow island is located roughly in the middle between Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya . Administratively it belongs to the Taimyrski Rajon (Dolgano-Nenezki) of the Russian Krasnoyarsk region .
The island is constantly exposed to extreme arctic storms, but has no glaciers . In summer, large areas of the island are free of snow and ice. Even in the warmest months of the year, the temperature hardly exceeds zero. The minimum temperature measured since the beginning of the weather observation was −52.0 ° С , the annual average amount of precipitation is 242 mm . The precipitation falls mainly as snow. Compared to other arctic islands, its highest point is relatively low at 22 m. The next country is the lonely Ushakov Island , which is 140 km further north. The sea surrounding the meadow island is covered with pack ice in winter and with ice floes in summer as well.
history
In 1912 the schooner St. Anna, trapped in the ice, drifted through the Kara Sea. Some of the crew left the ship in 1914 to try to return to civilization on foot across the ice. The first mate of St. Anna , Valerian Albanow , was able to save the ship's logbook. Albanow and the sailor Alexander Konrad (1890-1940) were the only survivors of the Brusilov expedition.
In 1924, the Soviet oceanographer and polar explorer Wladimir Wiese studied the St. Anna's drift path . He suspected a land mass in the northern Kara Sea between the 78th and 80th parallel as the cause of a deviation in the sea current, which he discovered. The island was discovered on August 13, 1930 by an expedition with the icebreaker Sedow led by Otto Schmidt . Wiese, who was a participant in the expedition, was able to go ashore on the island he had theoretically predicted. However, it was too small to have the observed influence on the drift of the St. Anna . Only the discovery of Ushakov Island and a large area of shallow water that connects the two islands with the island of Solitude further south showed that Wiese was correct in his analysis.
The hydrometeorological polar station on Wiese Island - one of the northernmost stations in the world - began research on November 1, 1945. The first wintering on the island was carried out from 1945 to 1946.
literature
- RK Headland: Summary of the Arctic archipelagos and islands. Scott Polar Research Institute , Cambridge University
Web links
- Meadow Island topographic map
- Hydrometeorological station on Memento Meadow Island from April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive , Russian
- Biography of Vladimir Yulyevich Wiese (Russian)
- Society for Geography in Berlin, Volume 19, Number 10, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg 1931 , ISSN 0028-1042 (Print) ISSN 1432-1904 (Online)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wladilen Troitski: The heroic deed of the helmsman Albanow ( Memento from November 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Arktika Antarktika Filatelia (Russian)
- ↑ GP Awetissow: Wise Vladimir Juljewitsch (21.02 (05.03) .1886-19.02.1954) . In: Imena na Karte Rossijskoi Arktiki , Nauka, Sankt Petersburg 2003, ISBN 5-02-025003-1 (Russian).
- ^ Brian Bonhomme: Russian Exploration, from Siberia to Space - A History . McFarland, Jefferson 2012, ISBN 978-0-7864-6687-0 , pp. 214 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).