Abstracto

Land loss and sea transgression due to glacial recession under climate warming in the Arctic

Wieslaw Ziaja

 It is a common but incorrect opinion that a significant land loss and especially an appearance of new islands, due to a sea transgression under climate warming necessitates an appropriate sea level rising, predicted in future, e.g. by the end of our century. However, such a transgression has occurred without any significant sea level rising in many places. If the bottom of a frontal part of a tidewater glacier lies on bedrock below sea level this bedrock has to be inundated by sea during this glacier recession. Numerous descriptions of such a process were published by Pelto (2009–2018, 2017) and Sharov (2014). 34 new straits and islands (each from 0.5 to 59 km2) have appeared due to recession of Arctic glaciers under climate warming in 1963- 2017, as described by Ziaja and Ostafin (2019). Sea level rising was estimated at only 2-3 mm per year in that time. Next straits and islands are in the course of forming, e.g. an unnamed peninsula (ca. 200km2) which is very close to separation from the Eastern Greenland mainland at Dove Bay, and the Sørkapp Land peninsula (ca. 1200 km2) which may be separated from Spitsbergen in the of 21st century (Ziaja and Ostafin 2015).