Novopangea: a future after the Pacific closes
Novopangea is a scenario in which Pacific closure assembles a new supercontinent. The Americas approach a grouping that includes Asia and Australia, while the Atlantic becomes the main ocean surrounding the assembly. This differs from returning the Americas towards Africa.
See Novopangea 200 million years ahead. The view opens at the endpoint of the version used here. Earlier stages show neighbours changing gradually. The final image alone cannot explain what would have to happen along the way.
Why does this scenario seem intuitive?
Numerous subduction zones surround the Pacific, while the Atlantic has a prominent ridge creating new floor. USGS describes both types of plate boundary. Extending this contrast suggests continued Atlantic expansion and gradual Pacific consumption.
Intuition does not measure probability, however. Boundaries can reorganise, ridges can reach subduction zones and collisions change the balance of forces. A present-day motion vector measures current conditions; it does not promise an unchanged direction for hundreds of millions of years.
More than moving the Americas
In the model of Davies, Green and Duarte (2018), Australia, Antarctica and a separating eastern African fragment also participate. The scenario has its own sequence of movements and basin changes. It is not simply one continent travelling straight towards another.
On a sphere, farther west does not mean sliding a flat shape across a screen. Plate motions are described by rotations. A globe is therefore useful for inspecting connections across the Pacific: the edge of a flat map is an arbitrary cut in a drawing, not an obstacle on Earth.
Why study the ocean around the future landmass?
Davies and colleagues (2020) used future configurations to model tides. Basin shape and size affect an ocean's response to tidal forcing. This is a scientific question that can be investigated for several conditional geographies.
Such an experiment does not automatically identify the true future. It establishes how a process would change under an assumed arrangement. Several explicitly described scenarios are consequently more informative than one picture labelled Earth in 200 million years.
Is Novopangea the most likely outcome?
The map collection used here provides no reliable probability ranking. Huang, Li and Zhang (2022) obtained modelling arguments for Pacific closure, but called their result Amasia. Both the scenario name and model type need checking before two headlines can be compared.
Our animation shows the Davies grids, not Huang's simulation. Compare it with Pangaea Ultima and polar Amasia. Colours distinguish land from shelves and do not predict future countries or climate.