The hidden river could accelerate ice loss.
A river longer than England's Thames flows beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, draining an area the size of France and Germany combined, new research reveals.
"When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other," study co-author Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said in a statement."Now we are starting to understand there are whole systems down there, interconnected by vast river networks, just as they might be if there weren't thousands of meters of ice on top of them.
The river system sits under four slowly flowing masses of ice: the Institute Ice Stream, the Mӧller Ice Stream, Support Force Glacier and Foundation Ice Stream/Academy Glacier, which are vulnerable to instability should their borders retreat inland. The river emerges under a floating ice shelf into the Weddell Sea, where the meltwater has the potential to eat away at the ice shelf from below.
"From satellite measurements we know which regions of Antarctica are losing ice, and how much, but we don't necessarily know why," she said."This discovery could be a missing link in our models. We could be hugely underestimating how quickly the system will melt by not accounting for the influence of these river systems."
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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