OSLO, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard got a new island of about 10 square kilometers, public broadcaster NRK reported Saturday.
The island has been considered to be a peninsula for decades, but glacier melting during summer revealed something else, the report said.
"In the new pictures, a blue strip of sea appeared where the glacier has withdrawn," Anders Skoglund, topographer from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso, told NRK.
Skoglund was the one who discovered the new island on the northeast coast of Svalbard, where the institute works on producing map data of the Svalbard area.
Geir Moholdt, a glacier researcher from the same institute, said that other small islands will likely appear in future.
"But it is ten or maybe 100 years ahead," he told NRK.
"The glaciers on Svalbard have retreated a lot in recent years. Not least, it applies to the glaciers that go out into the sea, they retreat faster than those on land," Skoglund added.
