Denmark Strait: description, photo. Waterfall at the bottom of the Danish Strait

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:44

Where is the Denmark Strait? It separates the southeast coast of Greenland and the northwest coast of Iceland. Located in the northern hemisphere, its maximum width reaches 280 kilometers. Connects the Greenland Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It has a minimum depth of the navigable part of 230 meters. The length of the water area is about 500 kilometers. The Danish Strait conditionally divides the World Ocean into the Arctic and Atlantic. According to the research of geographers, the real boundaries of the strait took shape about 15 thousand years ago.

Let's look into history

The battles of the Second World War took place in the Danish Strait. One of the most famous is the one that took place in May 1941, it was attended by ships of the British Royal Navy and the naval forces of the Third Reich (Kingsmare). The battlecruiser of the British fleet "Hood", as a result of these actions, wasdamaged and sunk by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck, which the British, led by the battleship Prince of Wales, tried to prevent from proceeding through the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic Ocean. The forces of the Third Reich were commanded by Günther Lutyens, and the British by Lancelot Holland, who died along with the rest of the team.

Development of water area

The first people to visit the strait were the Vikings from Norway, who in the 9th century sailed on their ships through it to the shores of North America and Greenland. Due to the peculiarities of the climate, icebergs constantly drift along the waters of the water area.

The shores of the islands of Greenland and Iceland, which are washed by the Denmark Strait, are indented by fjords and, by and large, have not changed outwardly over the past few millennia.

Bottom and depths

It is worth noting that the bottom relief in the strait is quite uneven. The threshold between Iceland and Greenland has depressions, the depth of which reaches more than 300 m, and the minimum is about 150 m. It is he who separates the strait from the North Atlantic. It is believed that the average depth of the strait varies between 200-300 m. However, after long-term studies of this area, scientists have discovered quite deep depressions, the size of which exceeds two thousand meters. That is why it can be argued that the change in the depth of the Denmark Strait ranges from 150 to 2.9 thousand meters.

Shipping

The impact of human activities on these edges is weak. Shipping toThe Danish Strait is non-intense. Among the categories of vessels, fishing predominates, since this water area is rich in arthropods, many species of fish, such as salmon, capelin, flounder, and halibut. The Danish Strait is considered an industrial fishing zone.

Navigation is still difficult due to the fact that icebergs are regularly detached from the tip of the fjords of Greenland, subsequently drifting in the direction of the currents. Some of them are especially large and pose a considerable danger to ships. Often, climatologists, hydrologists and meteorologists go to the waters of the strait along with fishing ships with research.

Underwater wildlife

The fauna of the water area is rich in marine representatives. As we have said before, many commercial fish live here. These are capelin, species of the salmon family, etc. Among other representatives of the animal world, the Danish Strait is inhabited by various species of whales, such as killer whales and beluga whales. Seal and harp seal rookeries are organized on the coast of Greenland.

Features of the Strait

There are two important currents in this water area. One of them is warm - Irminger, the second is cold - East Greenland. It is they who mainly influence the formation of climate, both in the strait itself and in nearby regions, that is, the islands. Scientists are putting a lot of effort into studying these circulating masses. Why is there so much attention to them? Everything is extremely simple, these currents, or rather, their interaction largely determines the climate of the NorthEurope.

In order to understand the importance of this, you need to answer a number of questions. For example, why has the temperature of the Denmark Strait been continuously dropping over the past decades? Is it possible to predict climate change in the near future? It is not yet clear whether the climate of Northern Europe will become warmer or cooler, but studying the strait will make it possible to make forecasts both for the long term and for the shorter term.

Denmark Strait Waterfall

Among the "sights" of the Danish Strait is an underwater waterfall. It is the largest in the world. This "miracle" of nature is more than 4 times higher than the largest above-ground waterfall. However, this is not the only thing in which it excels the rest. The amount of water falling to its base per unit of time exceeds the performance of the largest waterfalls over water hundreds of times. The rock that rises from the bottom of the strait reaches a height of three thousand meters. It is from it that the streams of water of the Arctic Ocean descend.

Waterfall at the bottom of the Danish Strait due to its geographical location, cold waters and the depth at which it is located, is little studied, but nevertheless attracts the attention of specialists from different countries. The first thing that deserves attention is the ways in which such unique phenomena are formed. Underwater waterfalls arise due to the fact that the degree of salinity and temperature level in different parts of the ocean varies, and there are underwater slopes nearby, then, according to the laws of physics, less dense wateris displaced by the denser one from the bottom of the ocean. Of course, no one saw this waterfall with their own eyes due to the impossibility of diving.