The world’s largest waterfall

Angel Falls is the highest waterfall on land with a height of 979 m and a width of 150 m at the bottom, equivalent to 3 Eiffel towers stacked on top of each other. However, Angel Falls is not the largest waterfall in the world. That title belongs to the Denmark Strait Falls, a body of water that slopes down in the strait between Greenland and Iceland, meaning the world’s largest and tallest waterfall is underwater, according to Live Science.

That’s possible because temperature and salinity differences power most ocean currents, according to Anna Sanchez Vidal, a marine science professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain. The Denmark Strait crosses the Arctic Circle, acting as a funnel for polar waters to flow from the Nordic seas into the Atlantic Ocean. But like everywhere else in the ocean, the water in the region is not uniform.

North of the Denmark Strait, surface water is exposed to cold Arctic air and becomes colder as some of the water freezes, leading to salt concentration in unfrozen areas. Cold, salty ocean water is denser than warm water, so it sinks to the bottom, while the lighter layer floats to the surface. This exchange fuels the deep ocean current that flows south through the strait, emptying into the Irminger Sea in the North Atlantic.

Of course, waterfalls always have cliffs or slopes, and the Denmark Strait is no exception. A 3,500 m steep ledge on the seafloor near the southern tip of Greenland was created by glaciers 11,500 – 17,500 years ago, during the last Ice Age. Seafloor water flowing south through the strait rushes over the edge of the steep ledge and falls down its flank, forming waterfalls below the warmer surface waters of the Irminger Sea.

Although the seabed slopes down more than 3,500 m, the overflow is only about 2,000 m high, twice the height of Angel Falls, because it flows into a deep lake containing cold and dense water. This waterfall is very impressive because it is not like a land waterfall, according to Mike Clare, head of the marine geological systems group at the UK’s National Oceanography Center in Southampton. For example, the overflow is as wide as the Denmark Strait, meaning it extends over 480 km of seabed. As a result, the water flows down at a speed of only about 0.5 m/s, much slower than walking speed and far below the flow speed at Niagara Falls (109 km/h), or 30.5 m/s. S.

The cold water flowing through the Denmark Strait is part of a system of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which sends warm water north and cold water south in a long circle in the Atlantic Ocean. After leaving the Denmark Strait, the cold water continues its journey south to Antarctica, warms up and rises to the sea surface (called upwelling) and then returns to complete the cycle in the Arctic.

Vidal shared that currently, the waterfall is threatened by climate change. Melting ice caps and warming oceans pump more fresh water into the system, slowing the AMOC’s rate. If AMOC stops moving, the Denmark Strait waterfall will lose density and stop flowing.