Global Thaw 10,000 Years Ago May Have Fueled Volcanoes and Sped Up Continental Drift

Learn how a computer simulation demonstrates that tectonic activity may be less slow and steady than previously thought.

By Paul Smaglik
Apr 23, 2025 10:00 PMApr 23, 2025 9:54 PM
Continental drift speeds up
Graphic showing the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Ridge (red line) and how melting ice from Greenland caused changes in the motion of Earth's crust (purple arrows). (Image Credit: Tao Yuan and Shijie Zhong)

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Melting glaciers in North America 10,000 years ago may have given continental drift a bit of a push. Similar activity in Greenland now could eventually trigger volcanic eruptions in Iceland.

Geoscientists modeled a chain of events that demonstrate how sea level rise impacts plate tectonics, they report in the journal Nature.

“As ice volume was greatly reduced, it caused a huge motion in Earth’s crust,” Tao Yuan, a graduate student at Colorado University, Boulder, and an author of the paper, said in a press release. “Scientists knew that the ice melting caused the plates to uplift. But we show that they also moved a lot horizontally due to the ice melting.”

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