New lakes dicovered below Antarctic ice

[Grant]

Scientists have discovered four giant lakes under the Antarctic ice.

Together the four are as big as Lake Vostok, the biggest body of water so far discovered in Antarctica. Researchers say the newly found lakes appear to affect how rapidly ice is transported from the interior of the continent to the sea. Writing in the journal Nature, they say that understanding the interaction of lakes and ice is crucial to forecasting the impacts of climate change. The four lakes lie under the Recovery ice stream which brings ice from hundreds of kilometres inland into the Weddell Sea.

They were found using a combination of radar data gathered by satellite, and records of an expedition mounted to the area in the 1960s on which scientists had used a pioneering ice-penetrating radar. Sub-glacial lakes create tell-tale shapes in the surface of the ice above, while readings taken through the ice had detected, in the words of the 1960s expedition, "a possible melt layer at the bottom of the ice-cap". About 150 lakes have been discovered under the frozen Antarctic surface.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | New lakes beneath Antarctic ice