ИСТИНА

Climate change and the Arctic sea ice decline is a well-known downward trend, which has shown a marked acceleration since the beginning of the 21st century. This trend clearly reveals its impact on small Arctic islands that were once surrounded by thick ice fields. The response of small islands to these changes is still poorly understood. The research is focused on 2 small islands. One of them is ice-island Ushakova, and the second one is the Vise island which is low plain without ice and glaciers. These islands were surveyed during the expedition “Open Ocean: Archipelagos of the Arctic – 2019” with the oceanographic research vessel “Professor Molchanov "in 2019, including coastal observations from a vessel and UAV shooting of individual areas by JI Phantom. The study of the islands changes was carried out on the basis of topographic map of 1957 and Landsat 5, 7, old satellite images, Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 for the current situation. Multiple interferometric surveys Sentinel-1 for the whole 2019 were analyzed to characterize the seasonal variability of the surface of Vise Island. Image analysis were accompanied by detailed meteorological data and relied on it. The results of the study show definite but different responses of these islands to observed climate change in 21st century. This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 18-05-60221).