These Landsat satellite images show the emerging islands from 2000 to 2017. The three yellow arrows at the top right of the images point to the new islands.

At a Glance

The new islands highlightthe rapidity glaciers and ice sheets are melting in the Arctic.The exposure of these new islands creates further instabilityof the ice cap and accelerates glacier melt.

Canada's retreating Devon Ice Cap has revealed three new sizableislands in the Canadian Arctic.

Glaciologist Mauri Peltothe emerging islands via satellite images and posted the images in a blog post. He wrotethat in 2000, the Cape Caledon Glacier terminated along its north side on three rocky points. By 2017, the glacier has separated from the three rocky points on the northern margin, creating three new islands.

The new islands,each about 0.3 miles across,highlightthe rapidity glaciers and ice sheets are melting in the Arctic due to global warming.

"The islands are a change in the map that indicates the significant nature of glacier change," Pelto told weather.com.

In fact, the Arctic is warming as any other part of the world, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted.

Pelto said the exposure of these new islands creates further instabilityof the ice cap,accelerating glacier melt.

"Islands do buttress glaciers," Peltosaid. "When a glacier retreats from an island, the calving front is less stable and further retreat typically ensues."

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Perhaps even more significant, Pelto told weather.com, is the lack of snowfall that remains behind in the summer months because of the ever-increasing warming.

"For the ice cap as a whole, the retreat from the islands of this smaller outlet glaciers are not as significant as the lack of retained snowfall that resulted from extensive melt across the ice cap," he said.

Scientists began to noticea marked retreat of glaciers beginning in the 1960s, butthe rate at which glaciers were melting accelerated in the 1990s.

"We have in the last 20 years or so," Luke Copland, a glaciers and ice caps researcher at the University of Ottawa, toldMashable. "That's a doubling in how much ice gets lost each year."

The reduction in snowfall will only exacerbate global warming, Pelto explained. Typically, snowfall serves in a feedback loop that reflects sunlight back into space, reducing warming. With less snowon the ground than in years past, the effect is diminished and more heat is absorbed by the glacier, making it melt even faster.

Pelto said the rate glaciers and ice sheets are melting is "significant in Nunavut, British Columbiaand Alberta for large valley glaciers, small cirque glaciers, large ice caps and small ice caps alike.

"It is temperature driving the rise in snowlines, the reduction in snowpack and the resulting retreat," Pelto said.