Water Found Under the Antarctic Ice Cap

Scientists have now detected a system of rivers and lakes of moving water underneath the ice sheet covering West Antarctica. According to reports that were reported to the SFGATE, This discovery may call for revisions in predictions of sea level rises as the ice melts because of climate change.

David Vaughan belonging to British Antarctic Survey said that this process may have been happening for quite a long time. There seem to be lots more movements under the Antarctic ice cap than was thought possible.

As water moves faster in these sub-glacial lakes, melting ice will flow into the open seas more quickly, causing rise in water levels. The way we have predicted sea level rises does not yet take into account the findings of this new study.

A report from the Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel has said that the uncertainty about how icecaps respond to climate change is the biggest unknown factor when predicting sea levels. Helen Fricker from the Scripps Oceanography Institution, University of California at San Diego, said that we cannot make predictions of what will happen to the Antarctic region unless we understand this process.

Dr. Fricker used data collected through satellites to map the overlying ice that can be up to 3 km thick. The ice level rises and falls as lakes fill with water and then get emptied. During the period between 2003 and 2006 the scientists found that there were regions where the altitude had changed dramatically. In one case a lake had been deflated by 9 meters. The results are published in the Science journal.

Nearly 150 isolated lakes have previously been reported to be under the ice cap. Dr. Fricker's team has discovered new bodies of such waters. These range in size between 120 and 500 square kilometers, in 15 places surrounding Antarctica and many of these are connected by fast moving water channels.

Prof. Vaughan said that previously the Antarctic was thought to have been frozen down to its bed. But in some places free water was present at the bottom. The free water lubricated fast ice flow but it was steady and nothing changed much. But this view seems to have become outdated. It was found that instead of moving in steady trickles, water is filling up in some places while bursting through to other places and the process seems to be more widespread than thought previously.

Dr. Fricker said the results surprised her. She said scientists had thought these changes happened over decades, but we now see large changes in months.