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What Lies Beneath Greenland Could Rewrite What We Know About Rising Seas
12:49:47 2025-12-20 1966

New 3D models uncover hidden heat beneath Greenland, linking deep Earth processes to ice sheet behavior and future sea level change.

A team led by scientists at the University of Ottawa has produced high-resolution 3-D maps of temperatures deep beneath Greenland and northeastern Canada. Greenland is a key place to study because it sits above an ice sheet expected to be a major driver of global sea level rise and because the land has moved over the Iceland hotspot, a deep heat source that has shaped its geology.

The new results suggest the subsurface temperature contrasts are unexpectedly large, and those differences help narrow down the likely route the hotspot took across the island while also affecting how the ground flexes as ice loads change.

Hidden heat beneath Greenland

The research was carried out at the University of Ottawa with collaborators from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The team combined multiple satellite and land-based data sets in a probabilistic analysis and ran hundreds of thousands of simulations on high-performance computing systems, including those at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.

By linking the temperature maps to the mechanical behavior of the solid Earth, the researchers found that viscosity in parts of the upper mantle could vary by as much as three orders of magnitude, and an ensemble of 3D viscosity models matched both paleo sea level records and present-day vertical land motion measurements, supporting the temperature model and underscoring its value for improving reconstructions of past ice sheet change and future sea level projections.

“Our new regional temperature models reveal significant lateral variations in the Earth’s thermal structure beneath Greenland, which provide important information on the island’s passage over the Iceland hotspot,” explains uOttawa’s PhD graduate Parviz Ajourlou, the study’s first author. “These variations help us better interpret Greenland’s tectonic history and the influence of this history on the geophysical properties of the underlying rocks.”

Glenn Milne, Chair and Full Professor within the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at uOttawa and the principal investigator, emphasizes the implications: “This research advances our understanding of the Earth’s internal structure beneath Greenland. Temperature variations directly influence the interaction between the ice sheet and the bedrock, which must be quantified to interpret observations of land motion and gravity changes. These observations tell us how the ice sheet is responding to recent climate warming.”

Modeling the future of sea levels

The innovative approach involved processing multiple geophysical data sets, such as seismic velocities, gravity anomalies, and heat flow, to develop a comprehensive 3D temperature model. The findings not only clarify Greenland’s geologic past and the current state of the ice sheet but also improve the ability of scientists to simulate future changes of the ice sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise.

“This work is a good illustration of how our knowledge of the solid Earth enhances our ability to understand the climate system,” says Ajourlou. “By improving how we model ice-earth interactions, we can better forecast future sea level rise and plan accordingly.”

 

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