Maps show why Greenland is so important as the Arctic warms

President Trump has repeatedly said that he wants the United States to control Greenland, refusing to take military action on the table and announcing that he will make the independent Danish territory part of the US “one way or another.”

Mr. Trump says the US needs to control the large, mostly icy island that sits inside the Arctic Circle for security reasons, accusing China and Russia of trying to take it over.

Greenland’s democratically elected leaders have it reject any US takeoverand the island’s government calls it something they “cannot accept under any circumstances.”

There are a number of the reasons why Greenland is of such great interest in the Trump administration, including its natural resources – reserves of oil, natural gas and rare earth minerals. But the island’s physical location on the map – and the melting sea ice on its borders – is also very important.

New routes around the world

Melting Arctic sea ice has created more opportunity to use northern shipping lanes – allowing shipping companies to save millions of dollars in fuel by taking shorter routes between Asia and Western Europe and the United States. The northern routes ran longer only in the warmer months.

There are several main trans-Arctic routes, the most active being the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which follows Russia’s northern border for nearly 15,000 miles. That route does not bring ships very close to Greenland, and Russia and China have agreed to develop the route together, and have been using it more in recent years.

A Russian merchant ship, assisted by an icebreaker, began traversing the NSR in winter in February 2021, proving that it is possible.

Another route, called the Northwest Passage, comes much closer to Greenland’s coastal waters and may be the route the Trump administration is concerned about.

Another, longer way to get goods from Russian ports or the energy producing areas of East Asia to the south. But that route, which goes through Egypt’s Suez Canal, is about 3,000 kilometers long.

According to the Arctic Institute, compared to the Suez Canal route, the Northern Sea Route can save shippers up to 50%, considering fuel and other costs, by reducing the distance from Japan to Europe, for example, to only about 10 days compared to the 22 it would take to go around the southern tip of Africa and go through the Suez Canal.

A 2024 analysis by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies also said the northern route would shave about 10 days off the same trip from Shanghai, China, to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

As ocean temperatures continue to warm and winter ice cover diminishes, shipping traffic in the northern passage is likely to increase, so control in that area – and the long Greenlandic coastline along it – will become increasingly important.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared graphs in 2022 predicting new routes that will be available to regular tanker drivers in Greenland over the coming decades.

NOAA’s modeling shows a dramatic increase in active voyages for both low-level vessels that are strengthened to penetrate sea ice, and conventional open-water vessels. The center even predicts that by 2059, it is possible for a low-level ship to travel in a straight line, bypassing the North Pole, as the formation of sea ice is greatly reduced.