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Jun 4, 2018 · Although researchers have long known these two periods—the early Holocene and Last Interglacial—experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in the Earth's orbit, the mix of fly species...
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Map of Greenland bedrock. Greenland's climate is a tundra climate ( Köppen ET) on and near the coasts and an ice cap climate (Köppen EF) in inland areas. It typically has short, cool summers and long, moderately cold winters.
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Greenland, the world’s largest island, lying in the North Atlantic Ocean. Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) is noted for its vast tundra and immense glaciers.
Although Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the island’s home-rule government is responsible for most domestic affairs. The Greenlandic people are primarily Inuit who, depending upon the region they are from, call themselves Kalaallit (West Greenlanders), Inugguit (from Thule district), or Iit (East Greenlanders). They call their homeland Kalaallit Nunaat (“Country of the Greenlanders”). The capital of Greenland is Nuuk (Godthåb).
More than three times the size of the U.S. state of Texas, Greenland extends about 1,660 miles (2,670 km) from north to south and more than 650 miles (1,050 km) from east to west at its widest point. Two-thirds of the island lies within the Arctic Circle, and the island’s northern extremity extends to within less than 500 miles (800 km) of the North Pole. Greenland is separated from Canada’s Ellesmere Island to the north by only 16 miles (26 km). The nearest European country is Iceland, lying about 200 miles (320 km) across the Denmark Strait to the southeast. Greenland’s deeply indented coastline is 24,430 miles (39,330 km) long, a distance roughly equivalent to Earth’s circumference at the Equator.
A submarine ridge no deeper than 600 feet (180 metres) connects the island physically with North America. Structurally, Greenland is an extension of the Canadian Shield, the rough plateau of the Canadian North that is made up of hard Precambrian rocks.
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Greenland’s major physical feature is its massive ice sheet, which is second only to Antarctica’s in size. The Greenland Ice Sheet has an average thickness of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), reaches a maximum thickness of about 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), and covers more than 700,000 square miles (1,800,000 square km)—over four-fifths of Greenland’s total land area. Layers of snow falling on its barren, windswept surface become compressed into ice layers, which constantly move outward to the peripheral glaciers; the Jakobshavn Glacier, often moving 100 feet (30 metres) a day, is among the world’s fastest glaciers. The remaining ice-free land area occupies the country’s coastal areas and consists largely of highlands; mountain chains parallel the island’s east and west coasts, rising to 12,139 feet (3,700 metres) at Gunnbjørn Mountain in the southeast. These highlands notwithstanding, most parts of the rock floor underlying the Greenland Ice Sheet are in fact at or slightly beneath current sea levels.
Long, deep fjords reach far into both the east and west coasts of Greenland in complex systems, offering magnificent, if desolate, scenery. Along many parts of the coast, the ice sheet fronts directly on the sea, with large chunks breaking off the glaciers and sliding into the water as icebergs.
Aug 23, 2021 · When Greenland was green: rapid global warming 55 million years ago shows us what the future may hold. Published: August 23, 2021 5:05am EDT. Volcanic emissions caused the warmest period in past...
Jul 20, 2023 · The timing – about 416,000 years ago, with largely ice-free conditions lasting for as much as 14,000 years – is important. At that time, Earth and its early humans were going through one of the...
This page presents Greenland's climate context for the current climatology, 1991-2020, derived from observed, historical data. Information should be used to build a strong understanding of current climate conditions in order to appreciate future climate scenarios and projected change.
The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived in Greenland around 2500 BCE.
