Secret 460 km river discovered beneath Antarctica

A new study reveals that as the climate warms, a river longer than the Thames found beneath the Antarctic may be accelerating ice loss.

Scientists assert that the 285-mile river has an impact on how ice flows and melts.

The research team discovered that the ice sheet’s foundation has a more active water flow than previously thought, which makes it more sensitive to temperature changes.

Professor Martin Siegert, an Imperial College London co-author of the study, said: “A few decades ago, when we first learned there were lakes beneath the Antarctic ice, we assumed they were separate from one another.

“Now that thousands of metres of ice are not covering them, we are beginning to realise that there are entire systems below the surface that are connected by massive river networks.

“Enough ice is stored in the area where this study is based to raise the sea level worldwide by 4.3 metres.

“How quickly and how much of this ice melts depends on how slick the ice base is.

“The recently found river system may have a significant impact on this process.”

There are two primary routes that water can get beneath the ice sheets: either through the deep crevasses where melted surface water flows, or through the base of the ice sheet where friction from the ice moving over land causes melting.

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The ice sheets surrounding the north and south poles, however, have extremely distinct features.

In Greenland, during the summer, when enormous amounts of water drain down via large crevasses known as moulins, the ice melts significantly.

Because the summers are still too chilly, the Antarctic’s surface doesn’t melt enough to form moulins.

The unexpected discovery has utterly disproved the previous assumption that there was little water present at the foot of the Antarctic ice sheets.

In reality, there is enough water present from base-level melting alone to form rivers buried deep beneath several kilometres of ice.

Under a floating ice shelf, where a glacier jutting out from the land is buoyant enough to start floating on the ocean, the newly discovered river emerges into the sea.

However, the river’s freshwater stirs up warmer water near the ice shelf’s base, melting it from below.

For the study, scientists from Malaysia, Canada, and the UK used aerial radar surveys to investigate beneath the ice.

The researchers focus on an understudied and largely inaccessible region that comprises ice from both the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets and flows into the Weddell Sea.

The fact that the discovery was made in 2022, according to the scientists, demonstrates how little is still known about the Antarctic.

They emphasise that while forecasting the effects of climate change in the area, it is important to take into account the presence of sizable rivers beneath the ice sheet.

For instance, the river systems may be significantly impacted if summers become warm enough to melt enough ice for the water to reach the base of the ice sheet.

It might transform Antarctica into a place much more akin to Greenland, where ice loss is far more rapid.

Additionally, there may be feedback loops that hasten the loss of ice.

For instance, if the ice begins to move more quickly as water builds up at the base, this will increase friction when the ice encounters dry soil and may result in more water being created.

“Previous studies have looked at the interaction between the borders of ice sheets and ocean water to understand what melting looks like,” said study co-author Dr. Neil Ross of the University of Newcastle.

However, the finding of a river that extends hundreds of kilometres inland and is responsible for some of these processes demonstrates that the ice melt cannot be properly understood without taking into account the entire system, including the ice sheet, ocean, and freshwater.

In order to generalise their models to other regions of the world and give us a greater understanding of how a changing Antarctica could influence the planet, the team is currently gathering more information about all of these systems.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.