Ushakov Island (russian: Остров Ушакова, ''Ostrov Ushakova'') is an isolated island located in the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. The average yearly

precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...

ranges from at a height of and between and around the highest point of the island's ice cap.

Geography

Ushakov Island is located close to the region of permanent sea ice midway between

Franz Josef Land , native_name = , image_name = Map of Franz Josef Land-en.svg , image_caption = Map of Franz Josef Land , image_size = , map_image = Franz Josef Land location-en.svg , map_caption = Location of Franz Josef ...

and

Severnaya Zemlya Severnaya Zemlya (russian: link=no, Сéверная Земля́ (Northern Land), ) is a archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It lies off Siberia's Taymyr Peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Vilkitsky Strait. This archipelago ...

, at the northern limit of the

Kara Sea The Kara Sea (russian: Ка́рское мо́ре, ''Karskoye more'') is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipel ...

. This island lies close to the limit of permanent ice; it is desolate and subject to severe Arctic storms. Its total area is . This island belongs to the

Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District (russian: Таймы́рский Долга́но-Не́нецкий райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #10-4765 and municipalLaw #2-54 district (raion), one of the forty-three in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia ...

of the

Krasnoyarsk Krai Krasnoyarsk Krai ( rus, Красноя́рский край, r=Krasnoyarskiy kray, p=krəsnɐˈjarskʲɪj ˈkraj) is a federal subject of Russia (a krai), with its administrative center in the city of Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Si ...

administrative division of

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

. Owing to its extreme northerly location, the sea surrounding Ushakov Island is covered with

pack ice Drift ice, also called brash ice, is sea ice that is not attached to the shoreline or any other fixed object (shoals, grounded icebergs, etc.).Leppäranta, M. 2011. The Drift of Sea Ice. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Unlike fast ice, which is "faste ...

in the winter and is full of ice floes during the summer. The closest land is

Vize Island Vize ( el, Βιζύη, bg, Виза) is a town and district of Kırklareli Province in the Marmara region of Turkey. The district governor is Elif Canan Tuncer, and the mayor is Ercan Özalp ( CHP). According to the Turkish Statistical Institu ...

further south.

Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

Ice cap

Ushakov Island is covered by an

ice cap In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than of land area (usually covering a highland area). Larger ice masses covering more than are termed ice sheets. Description Ice caps are not constrained by topographical feat ...

. The highest point of this glacial feature is . The rocky ground below the icemass is flat and part of it lies below sea level. The edges of the ice cap form to high icy cliffs along the shore.Andrey F. Glazovskiy: ''Russian Arctic'', Chapter 2.7 in: Jacek Jania, Jon Ove Hagen (Ed.)
''Mass Balance of Arctic Glaciers''
(PDF; 132 kB), IASC Report No. 5, Sosnowiec-Oslo 1996. The surface of the ice cap has become smaller between 1950 and 2000, but the ice volume has grown from to . The average thickness of the ice having increased from to .Aleksey I. Sharov, Roland Pail, Roland Perko, Daniel Rieser, Florian Heuberger, Christoph Gisinger
''Variations of the Arctic Ice-Snow Cover in Nonhomogeneous Geopotential''
(PDF; 660 kB). In: ''Proc. ESA Living Planet Symposium'', Bergen, Norway 28 June – 2 July 2010 (ESA SP-686, December 2010)

Climate

History

This island was the last piece of undiscovered territory in the Soviet Arctic. It was finally located in 1935 when the few remaining unexplored areas in the northern Kara Sea were surveyed by

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

hydrographic and oceanographic operations on icebreakers to study the sea and ice. The expedition that discovered the island was led by polar explorer, cartographer and oceanographer Georgiy Alekseevich Ushakov aboard Icebreaker ''Sadko'', after whom the island was named. The first wintering in Ushakov Island was undertaken in 1954–55 and a polar station was established in 1954. This was abandoned during the 1980s and when an expedition visited the island in 2001, they found two small buildings partly sunken into the ice.полярная станция Остров Ушакова
. Archived. Retrieved 3 May 2018.

References

External links

The route over the drifting ice of Kara Sea from Frantz-Josef Land Archipelago to Ushakov Island
{{Kara Sea Islands Islands of the Kara Sea Exploration of the Arctic Polar exploration by Russia and the Soviet Union Populated places of Arctic Russia Islands of Krasnoyarsk Krai Arctic expeditions