A new island has formed in the Red Sea. The island formed following a volcanic eruption in the Red Sea earlier this month. The volcanic activity occurred along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands off the west coast of Yemen. The image on the left was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite on October 24, 2007 and the image on the right (which shows the new smoking island) was captured on December 23, 2011. You can view larger versions of the images here.
NASA's Earth Observatory says fisherman witnessed lava fountains the reached up to 30 meters (90 feet) high on December 19 in the area where the new island formed.
The island could be temporary. Islands formed this way are often fragile and can be broken up by sea waves. Here is a larger version of the satellite image of the new island:
