Does the North Pole belong to Greenland and by extension to Denmark, to which it is politically linked? That’s the question Danish geologists heading for the Arctic this week will be trying to answer.
They hope the seismic data they collect between now and mid-September will support the claim of Denmark and Greenland to 150,000 square kilometres of extra territory extending north from Greenland into the oil and gas-rich Arctic sea floor.
Their claim rests on whether an underwater formation extending north of Greenland called the Lomonosov Ridge qualifies as an extension of Greenland’s land mass. If it does, Greenland can bid to extend its undersea territory.
Jens Jørgen Møller, head of the department organising the expedition at the Geological Society of Denmark and Greenland, says the key data will come from an echo sounding device mapping the profile of the seabed along the ridge, and from seismic measurements of sediment thickness.
Any claim that the Lomonosov Ridge belongs to Denmark and Greenland would meet resistance from Russia: in 2007 it claimed that the opposite end of the ridge is an extension of Siberia.
Other nations laying claims to chunks of the Arctic are Canada, Norway and possibly the US. Geological data is a prerequisite to winning an officially recognised claim to territory, according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, says Møller.