The Grand Canyon of

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

is a tentative

canyon A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency t ...

of record length discovered underneath the

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet is an ice sheet which forms the second largest body of ice in the world. It is an average of thick and over thick at its maximum. It is almost long in a north–south direction, with a maximum width of at a latitude ...

as reported in the journal ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'' on 30 August 2013 (submitted 29 April 2013), by scientists from the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

led by

Jonathan Bamber Jonathan Louis Bamber is a British physicist known for his work on satellite remote sensing of the polar regions, and especially the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. He has authored more than 200 refereed scientific publications about the c ...

University of Calgary {{Infobox university , name = University of Calgary , image = University of Calgary coat of arms without motto scroll.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms , former ...

, and

University of Urbino The University of Urbino Carlo Bo (, ''UniUrb'') is an Italian university located in Urbino, in the region of Marche, in north-eastern central Italy. The main campus occupies numerous buildings throughout the historic Urbino town center and the ...

, who described it as a mega-canyon. Ice-penetrating radar data collected during

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Operation IceBridge Operation IceBridge (OIB) was a NASA mission to monitor changes in polar ice by utilizing airborne platforms to bridge the observational gap between the ICESat and ICESat-2 satellite missions. The program, which ran from 2009 to 2019, employed v ...

showed a huge subglacial canyonOskin, Becky,
'Grand Canyon of Greenland' discovered under ice sheet
, NBC News, August 29, 2013 running from the central region of the island northward into the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

, to the

fjord In physical geography, a fjord (also spelled fiord in New Zealand English; ) is a long, narrow sea inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Antarctica, the Arctic, and surrounding landmasses of the n ...

of the

Petermann Glacier Petermann Glacier () is a large glacier located in North-West Greenland to the east of Nares Strait. It connects the Greenland ice sheet to the Arctic Ocean at 81°10' north latitude, near Hans Island. The glacier and its fjord are named after Ge ...

. The bottom of the canyon is below sea level; the canyon is likely to have influenced basal water flow from the ice sheet interior to the margin. Jonathan Bamber, a geographer at University of Bristol, stated, "The distinctive V-shaped walls and flat bottom suggests water carved the buried valley, not ice." The canyon is more than long, up to deep and wide, making it the longest canyon discovered on the Earth to date. There are, however, many canyons—including Arizona's

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

(1,857 meters) and Tibet's

Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, also known as the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, the Tsangpo Canyon, the Brahmaputra Canyon or the Tsangpo Gorge (), is a canyon along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is the deepes ...

(overall 2,268 meters), previously the world's longest—that are deeper. The canyon predates ice sheet inception and has influenced basal hydrology in Greenland over past glacial cycles.

References

{{coord, 79.0000, N, 46.0000, W, source:wikidata, display=title 2013 in Greenland 2013 in science Canyons and gorges of North America

Grand canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

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