Climate change|A total of 231 lakes have already been found under the ice. If the largest of them, Lake Vostokjärvi, were to empty, the sea level would rise.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The CryoSat–2 satellite of the European Space Agency Esa discovered 85 new lakes under the Antarctic ice sheet.
A total of 231 active lakes have been found under the ice, says the science journal Nature Communications.
Subglacial lakes affect the movements of glaciers and indirectly also sea level rise.
Antarctica 85 previously unknown subglacial lakes have been revealed from under the ice, tells European Space Agency Esa. Many of these lakes are several kilometers deep.
The lakes were discovered when the study brought together Esan The CryoSat-2 satellite collected data from Antarctica from 2010–2020.
Lakes affect the movement and stability of Antarctic glaciers. They also have an indirect effect on the rise in the level of the world’s seas. The first frozen lake was found From Antarctica already in 1960.
Active a total of 231 lakes have already been found under the ice, he says scientific journal Nature Communications.
An active lake means a lake under the ice that empties and fills again and again, says Esa’s press release.
The satellite also identified new water drainage routes under the glacier. A network of lakes was found in the compiled data, where five separate lakes are connected to each other under the ice.
Lore of the subglacial lakes and water flow is limited because they are buried up to kilometers deep.
“It is very difficult to observe the filling and emptying of these lakes, especially when it can take months or years,” says one of the authors of the study, a doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds Sally Wilson.
Before this study, only 36 complete cycles of subglacial lake water from start to finish had been observed in the world.
Now, the researchers discovered 12 more complete fillings and deflations, Wilson says.
Iceman a lake can be created in several different ways, he says Live Science. For example, a lake can form when the geothermal heat of the earth’s bedrock rises to the bottom of a glacier, or when ice rubs against the bedrock.
Melted water accumulates on the surface of the bedrock and periodically drains away from it.
say The CryoSat–2 satellite was launched into space in 2010. It monitors different ice sheets on Earth.
Satellite is a part Esan’s FutureEO programwhich measures the thickness of the sea ice in the polar region and monitors the changes of the ice sheets in Greenland, Antarctica and other glaciers.
Tracking is possible with radar, which measures small variations in the ice surface. The radar also monitors sea level fluctuations.
“It was interesting to observe how subglacial lake areas change during different periods of filling and emptying. This shows that the hydrology under the Antarctic ice sheet is much more diverse than we previously thought,” says the study’s co-author, professor Anna Hogg from the University of Leeds.
So far, not all time series measured from lakes have been taken into account in models measuring sea level rise. Soon that data will also be included in the models.
Money the frozen lake is not active but stable. So they are not known to fill or drain regularly.
The largest subglacial lake Vostokjärvi is in East Antarctica. It’s in the lake up to 65,000 cubic kilometers of water at a depth of about four kilometers.
Lake Vostokjärvi is believed to be stable.
If all the water were to drain out of Vostokjärvi, it would even affect the stability of the Antarctic continental ice sheet and, to a large extent, the height of the sea level.