Denmark Strait cataract: The world’s largest waterfall, hidden underwater and in contrast to some other on land

The Denmark Strait cataract is a submarine waterfall within the ocean channel between Iceland and Greenland. It is technically the world’s largest waterfall, with waters plunging 11,500 toes (3,500 meters) down a slope from the highest of the cataract to its backside.

The waterfall itself is about 6,600 toes (2,000 m) tall, as a result of it lands in a deep pool of chilly water that spans the rest of the slope. That’s nonetheless double the peak of Angel Falls — the tallest waterfall on land — even when the Denmark Strait cataract does not look as dramatic because the landmark in Venezuela.

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The cataract is as large because the Denmark Strait, roughly 300 miles (480 kilometers) throughout, and the seabed drops off over a size of 310 to 370 miles (500 to 600 km). “If we visualize it, it seems to be like a comparatively low-gradient slope,” Mike Clare, chief of marine geosystems on the U.Ok.’s National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, beforehand instructed Live Science.

As a outcome, water gushing down the cataract strikes at a lot slower speeds than these recorded at different waterfalls — 1.6 toes per second (0.5 meters per second) in contrast with 100 toes per second (30.5 m/s) at Niagara Falls, for instance. “If you have been down there, you in all probability would not discover an entire heap occurring,” Clare mentioned.

Glaciers carved out the Denmark Strait cataract between 17,500 and 11,500 years in the past, over the last ice age. The waterfall straddles the Arctic circle and funnels polar waters from the Greenland, Norwegian and Iceland seas into the Irminger Sea, a area of the North Atlantic that’s essential for Atlantic-wide ocean circulation.

The waters north of the cataract are about 1,300 toes (400 m) deep, however solely the underside 660 toes (200 m) cascade down the slope. The high half sits on the floor and mixes with water flowing northward by way of the strait. After exiting the Denmark Strait, the underside half continues south alongside the seabed to the Antarctic, the place it enters a world loop of ocean currents referred to as the thermohaline circulation.

None of that is seen above the waves within the Denmark Strait. “At the floor, you could have typical sunny Arctic situations,” Anna Sanchez Vidal, a professor of marine science on the University of Barcelona in Spain who led a analysis expedition to the strait in 2023, beforehand instructed Live Science.

The waterfall is not detectable from house both, she mentioned, besides by way of mapping indicators, akin to temperature and salinity.

The Denmark Strait cataract is not the one identified underwater waterfall, though different documented cascades cannot compete with it in measurement. There are options generally known as knickpoints that always happen alongside continental margins that look much more like waterfalls on land, Clare mentioned, however these are small compared to the monstrous cataract.

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