Surprising discovery under the ice Antarctica. Beneath its surface, the frozen continent hides a river 460 kilometers long, longer than the English Thames and almost as long as the Duero. According to a study recently published in the journal Nature Geology. This finding could confirm the progressive melting that Antarctica is suffering in as yet unknown regions.
“When we first discovered lakes under the Antarctic ice a few decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other,” said Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and co-author of the new study.
“Now we’re starting to understand Below are all systems connected by vast river networks.just as they would have been if they hadn’t had thousands of feet of ice on them.”
This river beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has been documented for the first time by researchers from Imperial College London and other international institutions. May be accelerating ice loss as climate warms. And it is because the river significantly affects the flow and melting of ice on the continent.
“If we don’t account for the impact of these river systems, we may be greatly underestimating how fast the system will melt,” said lead researcher Christine Dow, of the University of Waterloo, in her study published in Nature.
It can raise sea level by 4.3 meters
The researchers responsible for the discovery used a combination of water flow patterns as well as airborne radar probes that can see through the ice. A large area containing ice from the eastern and western ice sheets in Antarctica was explored, and the water flowed into the Weddell Sea, which was already in the Southern Ocean.
“The region where this study is based It has enough ice to raise global sea levels by 4.3 meters if it were to melt completely.” Siegert’s comments. “It has to do with the amount of ice that melts, and how fast it melts, how slippery the ice floor is. The newly discovered river system can strongly influence this process.”
This study shows that Antarctica’s icy bottom is melting enough for rivers to form. This is not good news, because these high-pressure freshwater channels can accelerate the ice melting process as the bottom of the glacier becomes less stable.
The river system lies under four slow-flowing ice floes.: The Institute Ice Stream, MÓ§ller Ice Stream, Support Force Glacier, and Foundation Ice Stream/Academy Glacier are vulnerable to instability if their boundaries are drawn inland.
The finer broken ice may melt faster due to the friction of the ice “milled” across the rock, bringing more water to the river system below the ice and further accelerates the melting of the ice shelf.
Experts say its long-undiscovered fact shows how little we know about the continent.
The river system can affect how climate change affects the region and will need to be taken into account in future models and forecasts. All these factors they can lead to feedback loops where additional melting creates even faster rates of ice loss. The team is now trying to gather more data on all these mechanisms from surveys to apply their model to other regions and gain a better understanding of how a changing Antarctica could change the planet.
They conclude, “Only by knowing why the ice is disappearing, we can make models and predictions about how the ice will respond in the future under increasing global warming and how much this may increase global sea levels.”
Reference work: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01059-1
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Environment department contact address:crisclimatica@prensaiberica.es
Source: Informacion
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