Scientists have to factor in all kinds of variables when it comes to predicting ice loss in Antarctica as the world warms up.
Now researchers need to take into account a huge river that runs for some 460 kilometers deep beneath the ice; a distance longer than the river Thames that runs through London in the UK.
The researchers behind the discovery used a combination of airborne radar surveys that can peer through the ice, plus water flow modeling. The large area under examination includes ice from both the east and west ice sheets in the Antarctic, with water running off into the"The region where this study is based holds enough ice to raise the sea level globally by 4.3 meters [14 feet],""How much of this ice melts, and how quickly, is linked to how slippery the base of the ice is.
Ice melt in Greenland occurs via moulins . Different processes are observed in Antartica, where subglacial water flows over hundreds of kilometers . "Previous studies have looked at the interaction between the edges of ice sheets and ocean water to determine what melting looks like,""However, the discovery of a river that reaches hundreds of kilometers inland driving some of these processes shows that we cannot understand the ice melt fully without considering the whole system: ice sheet, ocean, and freshwater.
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