A previously unknown canyon has been discovered in Greenland, hidden beneath the ice. It is at least 750 kilometres long. To put that in perspective, imagine a ten kilometre wide gorge, up to 800 metres deep, running from the Southern coast of England and into Scotland. This is on the same scale as parts of the Grand Canyon.

>Jonathan Bamber , who led the research, was originally mapping Greenland’s bedrock, which was previously thought to be relatively flat and smooth. “Unexpectedly, we found an enormous apparent formation,” he said. “We looked at it in more detail, and realised it was a canyon.” 

The canyon, which is thought to predate glaciation, has remained hidden beneath two kilometres of ice for more than four million years. It has the characteristics of a meandering river channel, an ancient river system that Bamber thinks hasn’t been significantly modified by ice cover.

It is almost twice the length of the Grand Canyon, half as deep but almost as wide, and certainly the only feature in Greenland this long.

The discovery of such an enormous geographical formation seems astounding today. We’d probably assume that geographical exploration and mapping were exhausted after the development of satellite mapping.

“This really is quite remarkable,” Bamber said. “In an age when you have Google street view covering the entirety of the inhabited world, when virtually every house is mapped. In this context, to discover a geological feature of such scale is astonishing.”

>Timothy James , a glaciologist at the University of Swansea, agrees. “This is very exciting news,” he said. “Although, I’m not really surprised.” 

“Considerable effort has been put into collecting bed topography of the Greenland ice sheet recently, and there is a lot of data to be processed and interpreted.”

Accuracy is difficult if the bed proves to be highly featured, which now seems to be the case. James explained that there is much more to be discovered. Take the case of >the bed data recently released . 

“It has a spatial resolution of 1 km and vertical error that ranges from ±10 m to ±300 m,” he explained. “I’m sure there are many secrets left to discover beneath Greenland’s ice, and likewise in Antarctica.”

The data was collected over several decades by NASA and researchers from the UK and Germany. Radio waves of certain frequencies can travel through ice, but bounce off the bedrock beneath. So researchers sent down pulses of radio energy of this particular frequency. By analysing this radar data, the team were able to map the topography of the underlying bedrock.

Of course, the area contributes to sea level rise, and therefore the findings should help researchers to understand current changes.

“The canyon is significant when we think about the movement of the underlying water,” said Bamber. “This lubricates the ice sheet, and therefore determines the speed at which it moves.”

“We think the canyon is an efficient conduit for ice-melt from the glacier. If you want to model glacial movement – something that is ever more crucial due to global warming – then knowing about such topography is very important.”

The discovery shouldn’t affect our forecasts for future sea level in itself, but it does highlights that we still don’t know everything about the surface of our own planet.

This article was originally published at >The Conversation . Read the >original article . 

Negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States on the Danish autonomous territory are making progress but a deal has yet to be reached, Greenland’s Prime Minister said on Tuesday (May 12, 2026).

The mineral-rich Arctic island is coveted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We are negotiating but we don’t have an agreement,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a speech to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit.

“It’s difficult for me to be concrete about the conversations in the working group but we have taken some steps in the right direction,” he said.

The United States, which already has the Pituffik military base in northern Greenland, wants to open three new bases in the south of the territory, according to media reports.

A 1951 defence pact, updated in 2004, already allows Washington to ramp up troop deployments and military installations on the island provided it informs Denmark and Greenland in advance.

In January Mr. Trump backed down from his repeated threats to seize Greenland, after which Copenhagen and Nuuk held a first meeting in Washington.

A working group was then established to discuss the U.S. position.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly argued the U.S. needs to control Greenland for reasons of national security and has warned that if it doesn’t take the vast Arctic island, China or Russia will.

“We have been ready from the beginning and said we are ready to do more, take more responsibility … in terms of national or international security,” Mr. Nielsen said on Tuesday (May 12, 2026).

“Our only demand is respect.”

The negotiations are being led by senior U.S. State Department official Michael Needham, Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Moller Sorensen and Greenlandic diplomat Jacob Isbosethsen, according to the BBC.

The working group has held five meetings since January, it said.

Denmark has been without a government since a general election on March 24 that failed to give either the left or right bloc a majority.

Denmark’s Foreign Minister said on Thursday (January 29, 2026) he was “more optimistic” after technical talks kicked off with the United States over Greenland.

“We have had the very first meeting at senior official level in Washington yesterday regarding the Greenlandic issue,” Lars Lokke Rasmussen told journalists at an EU meeting in Brussels.

“It went well in a very constructive atmosphere and tone, and new meetings are planned. It’s not that things are solved, but it’s good.”

The trilateral talks come after U.S. President Donald Trump last week backed down from his threats to seize the autonomous Arctic territory of EU and NATO member Denmark.

“There was a major detour. Things were escalating, but now we are back on track,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “I’m slightly more optimistic today than a week ago.”

Mr. Trump’s threats over Greenland plunged the transtatlantic alliance into its deepest crisis in years.

The unpredictable U.S. leader backed off his desire to take control of Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater American influence.

But few concrete details appear to have been agreed — with authorities in Denmark and Greenland refusing to discuss handing over any sovereignty.

“I have stated on many occasions, we, of course, share the U.S. security concerns regarding the Arctic, this is something we want to solve in close cooperation,” Mr. Rasmussen said.

As part of the compromise with Washington NATO is expected to bolster its activities in the Arctic, while Denmark and Greenland could renegotiate a 1951 treaty on US troop deployments.

“We choose Denmark over the United States if asked to make such a choice here and now.”

The words came from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Prime Minister of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, during a joint press conference with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in Copenhagen as U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threats to annex the Arctic territory. The threat of a U.S. takeover receded after Mr. Trump said at Davos that he had agreed to a framework deal with European nations over Greenland, though he offered few details. But the crisis is far from over. With an unpredictable Mr. Trump insisting that the U.S. needs Greenland for ‘national and global security’, Mr. Nielsen, leader of the island’s 55,000 people, has been caught in the eye of a rare transatlantic geopolitical storm.

Mr. Nielsen, a former badminton champion and the head of the Demokraatit (centre-right) party, is the first member of his party to hold the premiership. He previously served as Minister of Labour and Mineral Resources in the Kielsen VII Cabinet from May 2020 to February 2021, a portfolio that now seems strikingly relevant given the crisis engulfing his tenure. Those mineral resources are exactly what have placed Greenland at the centre of a geopolitical storm.The Trump administration’s interest in the world’s largest island is hardly whimsical. Beneath the island’s ice sheet lie vast deposits of rare earth elements, which are essential for everything from smartphones to military technology. Greenland potentially holds significant reserves of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and other elements crucial for electric vehicles, wind turbines, advanced weaponry, and electronics. China currently dominates global rare earth production, controlling approximately 70% of mining and 90% of processing. Greenland, therefore, represents one of the few viable alternatives for Western nations seeking supply chain independence.

Adding to this is climate change, which has increased the island’s strategic value. As Arctic ice melts, new shipping routes are opening that could reshape global trade, cutting weeks off journeys between Asia and Europe. What was once impassable ice is becoming navigable water, and whoever controls Greenland’s waters and ports could control these crucial new routes.

Greenland hosts the Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, home to a key U.S. early-warning radar system tracking Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic. The base has operated since 1943 and remains vital to North American aerospace defence. Its strategic location also makes it vital for NATO’s collective defence, as the alliance relies on early-warning capabilities in the Arctic to safeguard North America and Europe. As great power competition intensifies in the Arctic, with Russia militarising its coast and China declaring itself a “near-Arctic state”, control over Greenland has become a strategic priority for the U.S.

Mr. Trump first floated the idea of buying Greenland in 2019, offering what he described as a “large real estate deal”. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the idea “absurd”. Mr. Trump’s return to office, however, has brought renewed pressure. While earlier reports suggested possible economic or military coercion, Mr. Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21 that he would not use force or impose tariffs on European allies, but called U.S. control of Greenland an “absolute necessity” for American and global security.

For Mr. Nielsen, who came to power last year, this represents a crisis that cuts to the heart of Greenlandic identity.

Colonial memories

For Greenlanders, these overtures have revived painful colonial memories. The island’s Inuit population endured centuries of Danish rule that included forced assimilation, family separations, and community displacements. The territory has been on a decades-long journey toward greater autonomy from Denmark, which colonised the island in the 18th century. Greenland achieved home rule in 1979 and expanded self-governance in 2009, controlling most domestic affairs while Denmark handles foreign policy and defence. Many Greenlanders dream of full independence, but economic reality complicates that aspiration, and Denmark provides annual subsidies of approximately $600 million, roughly a third of Greenland’s GDP. That, precisely, is Mr. Nielsen’s long-term goal: independence for Greenland, achieved through economic self-reliance rather than trading one form of dependence for another.

The population’s response to the Trump overtures is nuanced. While Greenlanders don’t want their island to become an American territory, there is a growing frustration with Denmark’s oversight-driven approach. Greenland’s economy remains heavily dependent on fishing. Some younger Greenlanders see American investment, on Greenland’s terms, as potentially beneficial. But investment is very different from annexation.

This is the tightrope Mr. Nielsen must walk. He cannot appear weak before Mr. Trump’s threats, which would embolden American pressure and undermine Greenlandic dignity. Yet he cannot afford to completely alienate the U.S., whose investment and military presence remain facts of Arctic life. Simultaneously, he must manage relations with Denmark, which has its own fraught relationship with its former colony, while navigating domestic politics.

Italy’s Prime Minister called U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on opponents of his plan to seize Greenland a “mistake” on Sunday (January 18, 2026), adding she had told him her views.

“I believe that imposing new sanctions today would be a mistake,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told journalists during a trip to Seoul.

“I spoke to Donald Trump a few hours ago and told him what I think, and I spoke to the NATO secretary general, who confirmed that NATO is beginning to work on this issue.”

However, the far-right Prime Minister — a Trump ally in Europe — sought to downplay the conflict, telling journalists “there has been a problem of understanding and communication” between Europe and the United States related to the Arctic island, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Mr. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on all goods sent to the United States from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland over their objections to his moves.

Ms. Meloni said it was up to NATO to take an active role in the growing crisis.

“NATO is the place where we must try to organise together deterrents against interference that may be hostile in a territory that is clearly strategic, and I believe that the fact that NATO has begun to work on this is a good initiative,” she told reporters.

Ms. Meloni said that “from the American point of view, the message that had come from this side of the Atlantic was not clear”.

“It seems to me that the risk is that the initiatives of some European countries were interpreted as anti-American, which was clearly not the intention.”

Ms. Meloni did not specify to what exactly she was referring.

Mr. Trump claims the United States needs Greenland for its national security.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot insisted that Greenland “is not for sale,” and criticized the U.S. for its intentions to take control of the strategic Arctic territory during a visit Sunday to its capital, Nuuk.

Mr. Barrot spoke in a news conference following a working meeting with Greenland’s prime minister and foreign minister.

“Greenland is not for sale,” he said, echoing French President Emmanuel Macron’s similar comments during a June visit to the vast, semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he seeks U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland. He has not ruled out a military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island.

“You’ll not make a nation great again by imposing yourself on your neighbors and allies,” said Barrot. “You’ll make a nation great again by contributing to the freedom of the world and to the ability of friends and partners to thrive and to live in peace and prosperity.”

Mr. Barrot, who visited a French military ship moored in Nuuk on Saturday, said his two-day trip aims to show France’s support for the sovereignty and freedom of Denmark and Greenland.

“My visit is a message: Greenland and Denmark are not alone,” he said. “Europe and France stand by them today and tomorrow.”

Earlier this week, Denmark’s foreign minister summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country for talks after the main national broadcaster reported that at least three people with connections to Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.