Wiese Island

Wiese Island, or Vize Island (Остров Визе Ostrov Vize), also known as Zemlya Vize (Земля Визе) is an isolated Russian island located in the Arctic Ocean, named after Soviet oceanographer of German-descent Vladimir Wiese.

Geography
This island is desolate and subject to severe Arctic storms, but it has no glaciers. In the summer, large areas of the island are free of ice and snow. Its total area is 288 km². Compared to other Arctic islands it is relatively large and flat, its highest point being only 22 m above mean sea level. The closest land is Ushakov Island 140 km further north.

Wiese Island lies at the northern end of the Kara Sea, roughly midway between Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya. It belongs to the Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District of the Krasnoyarsk Krai administrative division of Russia. Owing to its extreme northerly location, the surrounding sea is covered with pack ice in the winter, and it is quite full of ice floes even in the summer.

The island's coastline is also receding at a very fast rate, due to erosion. Between 2009 and 2016, its coastline is reported to have receded by up to 74 m, making it one of the fastest receding islands in the world.

History
In 1924, oceanographer Vladimir Wiese studied the drift of Georgy Brusilov's ill-fated Russian ship Svyataya Anna when she was trapped on the pack ice of the Kara Sea. Wiese detected an odd deviation of the path of the ship's drift caused by certain variations of the patterns of sea and ice currents. He deemed that the deviation was caused by the presence of an undiscovered island whose coordinates he was able to calculate with precision thanks to the availability of the successive positions of the St. Anna during its drift. The data of the drift had been supplied by navigator Valerian Albanov, one of the only two survivors of the St. Anna.

Finally, the island was discovered on 13 August 1930 by a Soviet expedition led by Otto Schmidt aboard the Icebreaker Sedov under Captain Vladimir Voronin. The island was named after Professor Wiese of the Soviet Arctic Institute who was at the time aboard the Sedov and who was able to set foot on the island whose existence he had predicted.

The first wintering in Wiese Island took place in 1945–46. A hydrometeorological polar station was established on 1 November 1945. Wiese Island's polar station is one of the northernmost in the world.

Climate
Wiese Island has an extreme Arctic climate, with temperatures only able to struggle above freezing slightly for a couple of months a year and temperatures are regularly below −20 °C from November all the way through to the following April.

Wiese Island has never recorded a temperature at or above 10 C.

Select bibliography

 * Summary of the Arctic archipelagos and islands. Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.