Greenland is located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Canada and northwest of Iceland. The territory comprises the island of Greenland—the largest island in the world—and more than a hundred other smaller islands. Greenland has a 1.2-kilometer-long (0.75 mi) border with Canada on Hans Island. A sparse population is confined to small settlements along certain sectors of the coast. Greenland possesses the world's second-largest ice sheet.
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages, Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters.
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole, Terrestrial North Pole or 90th Parallel North, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole.
An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are found in Antarctica and the Arctic. The boundary between the floating ice shelf and the anchor ice that feeds it is the grounding line. The thickness of ice shelves can range from about 100 m (330 ft) to 1,000 m (3,300 ft). The world's largest ice shelves are the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. When a large piece of an ice shelf breaks off, this can lead to the formation of an iceberg. This process is also called ice calving.
The Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf or Ronne–Filchner Ice Shelf is an Antarctic ice shelf bordering the Weddell Sea.
Kaffeklubben Island or Coffee Club Island is an uninhabited island lying off the northern shore of Greenland. It contains the northernmost undisputed point of land on Earth.
Dennis Schmitt is a veteran explorer, adventurer and composer.
Iceberg B-15 was the largest recorded iceberg by area. It measured around 295 by 37 kilometres, with a surface area of 11,000 square kilometres, about the size of the island of Jamaica. Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica in March 2000, Iceberg B-15 broke up into smaller icebergs, the largest of which was named Iceberg B-15-A. In 2003, B-15A drifted away from Ross Island into the Ross Sea and headed north, eventually breaking up into several smaller icebergs in October 2005. In 2018, a large piece of the original iceberg was steadily moving northward, located between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia Island. As of August 2023, the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) still lists one extant piece of B-15 that meets the minimum threshold for tracking. This iceberg, B-15AB, measures 20 km × 7 km ; it is currently grounded off the coast of Antarctica in the western sector of the Amery region.
The Greenland Sea is a body of water that borders Greenland to the west, the Svalbard archipelago to the east, Fram Strait and the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Norwegian Sea and Iceland to the south. The Greenland Sea is often defined as part of the Arctic Ocean, sometimes as part of the Atlantic Ocean. However, definitions of the Arctic Ocean and its seas tend to be imprecise or arbitrary. In general usage the term "Arctic Ocean" would exclude the Greenland Sea. In oceanographic studies the Greenland Sea is considered part of the Nordic Seas, along with the Norwegian Sea. The Nordic Seas are the main connection between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans and, as such, could be of great significance in a possible shutdown of thermohaline circulation. In oceanography the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas are often referred to collectively as the "Arctic Mediterranean Sea", a marginal sea of the Atlantic.
Peary Land is a peninsula in northern Greenland, extending into the Arctic Ocean. It reaches from Victoria Fjord in the west to Independence Fjord in the south and southeast, and to the Arctic Ocean in the north, with Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost point of Greenland's mainland, and Cape Bridgman in the northeast.
ATOW1996 is one of the northernmost documented points of land on Earth. It is a small island about 10 metres long and one metre high, located several miles north of Cape Morris Jesup in northern Greenland at 83°40′34.8″N30°38′38.6″W. It was discovered by and named after the (American) Top of the World Expedition of 1996.
The 83rd parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 83 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane, in the Arctic. It passes through the Arctic Ocean and North America.
Petermann Glacier is a large glacier located in North-West Greenland to the east of Nares Strait. It connects the Greenland ice sheet to the Arctic Ocean at 81°10' north latitude, near Hans Island.
83-42 is a rocky islet in the Arctic Ocean which may be the northernmost permanent point of land on Earth. It is also sometimes referred to as Eklipse 0, or Schmitt’s Island, after its discoverer, Dennis Schmitt. It measures 35 by 15 metres and 4 metres (13 ft) in height, and lies 699.8 kilometres (434.8 mi) from the North Pole. When it was discovered in 2003, lichens were found growing on it, suggesting it was not one of the temporary gravel bars commonly found in that region.
Wandel Land is a 15.7 km (52,000 ft) nunatak in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of several nunataks in the Melville Bay region of Greenland, where the Greenland ice sheet drains into the bay alongside its entire length apart from an occasional nunatak.
The northernmost point of land on Earth is a contentious issue due to variation of definition. How permanent some of the contenders are makes hard determination difficult, but sets an important threshold. Problematic issues include ice sheets, water movements and inundation, storm activity that may build, shift, or destroy banks of moraine material, and observational difficulties due to remoteness.
Stray Dog West is an island in Greenland. It is a candidate for the northernmost island on Earth.
Qeqertaq Avannarleq is an unofficial name of what was thought to be a previously uncharted island in the Arctic Ocean, discovered in August 2021. It is within the Arctic Circle, off of the northern tip of Greenland, and consists primarily of seabed mud and moraine, an accumulation of unconsolidated debris left behind by glaciers. One theory as to its creation was that it was formed relatively recently, during a violent storm.
