How Greenland scorched its underside

BBC ^ | Jonathan Amos

[BenLurkin]

It's like the underside of the island got a good roasting in the distant past and still has the big scar to prove it.

That hotspot, by the way, is the one which today is building Iceland in the middle of the North Atlantic.

The plume of broiling rock rising from deep inside the Earth has broken through the thin ocean floor at Iceland's location and is now creating new land with regular eruptions of lava.

Greenland's warm NW-SE band is reported by a team of researchers led by the US space agency (Nasa) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Their new map of the "geothermal heat flux" is essentially a picture of the variation in warmth escaping from the Earth's interior. It's the most detailed ever produced for the region and is reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

...

[S]cientists theorised that if it had then some magma should also have been accreted to the base of the continental crust that makes up the island. It's called under-plating.

And that's indeed what the team found when they examined gravity and seismic data - there is a wedge of dense material that aligns with the warm track.

"If you move a sheet of paper over a candle you get a scorch mark on the paper," said Dr Tom Jordan from BAS. "The residual warmth along that line in the paper is like the hotspot trail we see in Greenland.

"And the soot mark on the underside of the paper would be like the under-plating that is burnt on to the bottom of the craton and which we can detect from the gravity and seismic signals."

[BenLurkin]

[Red Badger]

Well, when it flips over it’ll get an even tan......................

[Mrs. Don-o]

I love this stuff.

[gr8eman]

LOL...is this a correlation between and island, like Guam, flipping over and global warming?! It’s amazing what global warming can do when it puts its mind to it!

[Red Badger]

Si......................

[EQAndyBuzz]

Thoule Greenland. Great place. That’s where the real polar bear club is.

[Jonah Hex]

"And the soot mark on the underside of the paper would be like the under-plating that is burnt on to the bottom of the craton..."

Thus sheetrock was born...

[DannyTN]

I hate when I scorch my underside!

Well, not always.

[Wuli]

G-d created a wonderously dynamic and ever changing Earth, not the static never-changing, always the same Earth that “climate scientists” claim we have enjoyed and SHOULD enjoy, as is, forever.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I’m thinking of Sule Skerry. That’s where the Silkies live.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good image. Thank you.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin.

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