Greenland on the move

This visualization shows the Greenland geothermal heat flux map, the track of the Iceland hotspot through Greenland, and the plate tectonic motion of Greenland over the hotspot during the past 100 million years.This video is also on the NASA YouTube channel. Geothermal heat flux (GHF) is the amount of heat flowing outward from the interior of the Earth as measured at different points on the surface. GHF can play an important role in the motion of glaciers in places like Greenland, but the ice can also make GHF difficult to measure directly. The ice sheet covering Greenland is up to three kilometers thick, so GHF there has been measured in only a few places where deep boreholes have been drilled through the ice.In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, NASA Goddard research scientist Yasmina Martos and her coauthors describe a method of mapping GHF across Greenland using a map of magnetic anomaly, the local variations in the Earth s mantle. The hotspot is responsible for the formation of Iceland, beginning roughly 20 million years ago, in a manner similar to the formation of the Hawaiian islands. The track of the hotspot through Greenland actually records the motion of Greenland over the last 100 million years as plate tectonics moved it north and west.This visualization shows the GHF map, the hotspot track, and the motion of Greenland. For More InformationSee [NASA.gov Feature Story](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-scientist-reveals-details-of-icy-greenland-s-heated-geologic-past)

A new map of Greenland s relative path, beginning underneath Ellesmere Island approximately 100 million years ago, passing beneath Greenland for tens of millions of years, and ending underneath Iceland today. For More InformationSee [NASA.gov](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-scientist-reveals-details-of-icy-greenland-s-heated-geologic-past)