Deep inside the Greenland ice sheet — hundreds of metres below the surface, in darkness and at pressures that would crush a car — something strange has been happening for decades without explanation.
Radar surveys of the ice, conducted repeatedly since the early 2000s, revealed mysterious structures: large, plume-like formations rising slowly from deep within the ice. They had been observed, catalogued, and puzzled over. Nobody knew what was causing them.
Now, researchers from the **University of Bergen**, **NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center**, and the **University of Oxford** believe they have the answer — and it's genuinely surprising.
**The Discovery**
Published in *The Cryosphere* (copernicus.org) in early 2026, the team's study proposes that the plumes are caused by **thermal convection** — the same process by which Earth's viscous mantle churns slowly over millions of years, and by which a pot of water circulates when it boils.
In thermal convection, warmer material near the bottom of a layer becomes less dense and rises, while cooler material at the top sinks to replace it. This creates slow, cyclical motion: a continuous, rolling circulation driven by temperature differences.
In Earth's mantle — solid rock, technically — this process operates on timescales of millions of years. In a boiling pot of water, it happens in seconds. In the deep ice of the Greenland ice sheet, the researchers found, it appears to happen on timescales of thousands of years.
"We typically think of ice as a solid material, so the discovery that parts of the Greenland ice sheet actually undergo thermal convection, resembling a **boiling pot of pasta**, is as wild as it is fascinating," said **Andreas Born**, a professor at the University of Bergen and co-author of the paper.
**The Softer Ice Revelation**
For convection to occur in ice, the ice must be capable of flowing — deforming under pressure and temperature gradients over long timescales. Ice does deform, slowly, but scientists' existing models assumed it was relatively stiff at the depths in question.
The new research suggests this assumption was wrong.
"Ice is at least a million times softer than Earth's mantle, though, so the physics just work out," said **Robert Law**, a geologist at the University of Bergen and lead author of the study. "It's like an exciting freak of nature."
The modelling indicates that deep Greenland ice may be significantly softer — potentially **up to 10 times softer** — than the values used in current ice sheet models. This matters because the stiffness (viscosity) of ice is a critical parameter in predicting how the ice sheet will flow, deform, and ultimately contribute to sea level rise.
**What This Means for Sea Level Predictions**
The Greenland ice sheet is one of the two largest bodies of ice on Earth (alongside Antarctica). It covers roughly 80% of the world's largest island, spanning 1.7 million square kilometres, and holds approximately **10% of all fresh water on Earth**.
If the Greenland ice sheet were to fully melt — a scenario that would take centuries even under aggressive warming scenarios — it would add an estimated **7.4 metres (24 feet)** to global sea levels. Even partial melting adds meaningful amounts: Greenland contributed more than 20% of total sea level rise between 2003 and 2016.
Current models of how the ice sheet will behave as the climate warms are built on assumptions about ice physics. If those assumptions are wrong — if the deep ice is substantially softer and more dynamic than believed — then the models may need revision.
The researchers are careful to note that softer ice doesn't automatically mean faster melting or higher sea levels: the relationship between ice viscosity and melt rates is complex.
"Improving our understanding of ice physics is a really major way to be more certain about the future," said Law. "But on its own, softer ice does not necessarily mean that the ice will melt faster or that sea level will be higher. We need further studies to fully isolate that."
"The more we learn about the hidden processes inside the ice, the better prepared we'll be for the changes coming to coastlines around the world," he added.
**A Mystery Solved**
What makes this discovery particularly satisfying is that it resolves a decade-long puzzle. The plumes were real — visible in radar data, reproducible across surveys. They demanded an explanation. And the explanation, when it came, turned out to be something that happens in Earth's mantle and in your kitchen, playing out in one of the most remote places on the planet.
The Greenland ice sheet is not a static mass of frozen water. It is a dynamic, flowing system with internal processes that science is only beginning to fully understand.
The pasta was boiling all along. We just couldn't see it. 🧊
*Sources: The Cryosphere (tc.copernicus.org, 2026) · University of Bergen press release · Gizmodo · Phys.org · ScienceFocus · Sci.News · Economic Times India (2026)*
