Freshwater lakes discovered under Antarctic ice
Freshwater lakes discovered under Antarctic ice
Scientists have recently discovered, for the first time, large amounts of water in the depths of the ice sheet covering Antarctica.
In the study published in the journal Science, a calculation was made showing that if water is separated as a wet sponge in the deep layers of 100 square kilometers in the western part of Antarctica, then a lake can be formed at a depth of 220 to 820 meters.
This was discovered by applying a technique called magnetic imaging with geophysical tools placed directly on the surface for a period of 6 weeks to discover groundwater under the glaciers.
“People have assumed that there might be deep groundwater at these distant depths, but so far no one has been able to get a detailed view,” Chloe Gustafson, a researcher at the Scripps Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and lead author of the study told CNN.
Study co-author, Associate Professor Kerry Kee of Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, shared information they imaged from the ice layer to about 5 kilometers and even deeper.
It was also noted that more studies should be conducted to understand the effects of the related discovery, especially with regard to the climate crisis and rising sea levels, within the limits of the study, which indicated that the groundwater system reveals a part that scientists have not yet been able to discover.