Overview

• The Northern Appalachian Anomaly sprawls 220 miles beneath New England at around 125 feet depth, marking a major deep-mantle thermal upwelling.
• Geodynamic simulations and seismic tomography date its origin to rifting between precursor North American and Greenland landmasses about 80 million years ago, revising the earlier 180-million-year hypothesis.
• The heat anomaly drifts southwest at approximately 12 miles per million years, projecting its presence beneath New York City in 10 to 15 million years with no immediate surface risk.
• Modeling indicates the anomaly’s thermal buoyancy has sustained Appalachian uplift, offsetting 20 million years of erosion to preserve the mountain range’s elevation.
• A counterpart anomaly under north-central Greenland has been linked to sub-ice heat currents that influence the stability and melting patterns of the overlying ice sheet.