Mountain in Greenland Prepares to Fall into the Sea

In June 2017, approximately 58 million cubic meters of rock collapsed in Kangerlussuaq Fjord, western Greenland, triggering a wave that struck the village of Nuugaatsiaq, killing four people and injuring nine. The village remains abandoned to this day.

A new study warns that the area is still not free from danger.

Geologist Marie Keddington and her colleagues from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute analyzed two newly identified unstable slopes in the Uummannaq Fjord system.

The first is located in Kangerlussuaq Fjord itself, three kilometers from the site of the 2017 collapse, and contains approximately 400 million cubic meters of rock.

This makes it one of the largest mapped active unstable slopes in the world.

The slope is moving slowly, but researchers do not rule out a complete collapse, which could generate waves exceeding 10 meters in height more than 100 kilometers away.

The second slope is smaller and closer to failure, located in Kangerlussuaq Fjord. It was barely visible before 2015 but has since developed rapidly. The team believes it is likely to collapse within years or decades, although the timing remains uncertain.

If such a collapse were to occur, a wave 3 to 7 meters high could reach the village of Ukkusissat, located 25 kilometers away, just six minutes after the failure.

Researchers link the increasing risks in the Arctic to permafrost thaw driven by global warming. The study was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.