Scientists discover what Earth’s next supercontinent will look like and the climate it creates could swing between a scorched tropical world and a planet-wide ice age swallowing the Americas into a single landmass

Earth’s landmasses are moving right now — slowly, at roughly the same pace fingernails grow, but relentlessly. Over hundreds of millions of years, that quiet drift has assembled and shattered supercontinents before. And according to geoscientists, it’s about to do it again.

Roughly 200 million years from now, all seven continents are expected to merge into a single massive landmass. Researchers have identified four distinct scenarios for how that collision could unfold — and each one would remake not just the world map, but the entire planetary climate system.

Plates in motion: the slow-motion force reshaping Earth

Plate tectonics, formalized as a theory in the 1960s, explains how all of this works. Earth’s outer layer is essentially a set of puzzle pieces — rigid plates floating on hotter, more mobile material beneath. They shift constantly, producing mountains, ocean trenches, and, over vast timescales, entire supercontinents.

The movement is almost impossibly slow: about 0.6 inches per year. Yet that pace has already assembled and dismantled enormous landmasses. Pangea — the last great supercontinent — broke apart around 200 million years ago, and scientists believe a new one will form in roughly the same timeframe.

We may already be watching the opening act. In 2005, a 25-mile-long crack tore open across the desert floor in Ethiopia — a feature called the Dabbahu Fissure. Some researchers think this rift could mark the beginning of the next continental divide.

Four futures: the competing supercontinent scenarios

Scientists have outlined four distinct scenarios for what the next supercontinent might look like, each depending on different assumptions about which oceans expand and which ones close.

Novopangea assumes the Pacific keeps shrinking while the Atlantic continues to widen. The Americas drift away from Europe and Africa, eventually colliding with Antarctica, then merging with Africa, Europe, and Asia. Australia docks to East Asia. The result: one enormous landmass — “New Pangea.”

Pangea Proxima takes a different path. Both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean expand before new subduction zones reverse the process, pulling continents back together into a roughly ring-shaped landmass with a small ocean basin at its center.

Aurica — a portmanteau of “Australia” and “America” — imagines both the Pacific and Atlantic closing. The Pacific is about 200 million years old; the Atlantic, around 180 million. The younger Indian Ocean, roughly 140 million years old, expands to fill the gap, clustering all seven continents near the equator.

Amasia closes the Arctic Ocean instead, leaving the Atlantic and Pacific open. All continents except Antarctica drift northward, massing near the North Pole and leaving a vast ocean to the south.

Climate models reveal starkly different worlds

A 2021 study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems used 3D global climate models to simulate how two of these configurations — Aurica and Amasia — would reshape Earth’s climate. The results differ sharply.

Aurica, clustered near the equator, would likely be warmer and drier than today — roughly 3°C higher on average. That warming could produce vast stretches of tropical coastline, coral reefs, sand dune complexes, and strong ocean currents. João Duarte, who developed the Aurica hypothesis, describes it as potentially resembling a planet-wide version of Brazil’s coast.

Amasia paints a far bleaker picture. With land massed near the poles, the ocean conveyor belt — the deep-circulation system that distributes heat from the equator toward the poles — would be severely disrupted. Permanent polar ice would cover enormous areas, reflecting solar heat back into space and triggering a planet-wide ice age. Duarte considers Aurica the most probable outcome and Amasia the least likely, though he acknowledges significant uncertainty across all four scenarios.

What the models can’t yet capture

For all their sophistication, these climate simulations leave major questions unanswered. Alex Pullen, an assistant professor of environmental engineering and earth sciences at Clemson University, points to vegetation as one of the biggest blind spots.

Plants profoundly affect atmospheric chemistry, precipitation, cloud formation, and albedo — the fraction of sunlight a surface reflects. What vegetation might look like 200 million years from now is entirely unknown.

Volcanic CO₂ emissions are another gap. Once continents consolidate, volcanic activity along collision zones could release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide — something the models don’t yet account for reliably. The simulations also excluded aerosols entirely, those microscopic particles suspended in air or gas that play a critical role in climate dynamics.

And no model can fully account for how current human activity — climate change, ocean pollution — will alter the planet’s baseline before any of these tectonic shifts unfold, as NASA scientist Michael Way notes.

Could life — or something like us — survive?

Survival prospects depend heavily on which scenario plays out. A glaciated Amasia would be catastrophic for terrestrial life — nearly all land-dwelling species would be wiped out, with only ocean life likely to persist. Even the warmer Aurica scenario wouldn’t be gentle. As continents merge, species from previously isolated ecosystems would collide, triggering fierce competition and widespread extinction.

Any post-human species, Duarte suggests, would need more than intelligence to endure. Intelligence, he notes, may actually carry self-destructive tendencies — the capacity to build nuclear weapons being one example. Surviving across that kind of timescale would require living in genuine equilibrium with the surrounding ecosystem.

Way offers a longer view. For most of Earth’s four-billion-year history, the planet has maintained broadly temperate surface conditions, with only brief exceptions. We don’t fully understand how it has managed that. “The planet is probably going to recover from the abuse we’ve given it,” he said.

That observation is worth sitting with. Whatever humanity does — or fails to do — Earth’s tectonic engine will keep running, the plates will keep moving, and a new supercontinent will form. What remains genuinely open is whether anything resembling life as we know it will be there to see it.

The complete study can be found here: Way, M. J., Davies, H. S., Duarte, J. C., & Green, J. A. M. (2021). The climates of Earth’s next supercontinent: Effects of tectonics, rotation rate, and insolation. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 22, e2021GC009983. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GC009983