85 new lakes found beneath Antarctica’s ice

Antarctic subglacial lake inventory. Credit ESA

Hidden beneath the world’s largest ice sheet, subglacial lakes play a crucial role in determining how Antarctica‘s ice flows and how stable it remains, factors that directly impact global sea levels.

Using ten years of observations from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite, scientists have discovered 85 previously unknown lakes deep below the ice near the South Pole.

This raises the total number of known active subglacial lakes in Antarctica to 231, an increase of more than 50%.

Study lead Sally Wilson, a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds, noted that our knowledge of these lakes and the movement of water beneath the ice is still limited, since they lie hidden under hundreds of meters of ice.

The research was published today in Nature Communications.

source ESA