Scientists Just Accidentally Discovered the Most Northern Island in the World

And they're not 100% sure how it got there.

A new Island just popped up off the Northern coast of Greenland. Scientists from Denmark and Switzerland who landed by helicopter on it in July originally believed it was Oodaaq Island. Months later, journalist Martin Breum, who had accompanied them on the exhibition, went back through his notes and realized the team had been about 80 miles North of Oodaaq.

Atlas Obscura talked to the expedition leader, Morten Rasch, who says this was just "one of a hundred sites" his team visited to collect samples for themselves and other scientists around the world.

The unnamed small island is about 100 by 150 feet and about 10 to 13 feet above sea level, and scientists are still unsure how the hunk of land formed. Stephen Royle, an emeritus professor of geography at Queen’s University Belfast and author of Islands: Nature & Culture says, "Well, [the island] might’ve been covered by pack ice or…maybe it’s only been recently formed by storm events."

And while land popping up from the depths of the sea may sound like something straight out of a fantasy novel, it’s not a totally abnormal occurrence. Just last month, a new island popped up off the coast of Japan due to volcanic activity. Additionally, according to Rasch, events like this aren’t rare in nature. This unnamed island's random appearance may be a short-lived one because of an occurrence known as ice pressure ridges.

"The area North of Greenland has a very low water level…[and] a lot of sea ice, and if there’s a strong wind from the North, then all of this sea ice gets pressed toward the shore, and then every once in a while it’ll grab the sea bottom and bulldoze [it] toward the shore and then these islands are developed," says Rasch.

Climate change is an obvious suspect here, but Rash theorizes that the heating of the Earth's surface could actually be the very thing that's keeping the island from slipping back into the sea because there's currently less drifting ice to push it back below the waves.

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Janae Price is a News Staff Writer at Thrillist. She's a native New Yorker and loves all things cheese, K-pop, and culture. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @janae_larie.