Lakes beneath Antarctic ice sheets initiate & sustain flow of ice to ocean

Geophysicists Robin Bell and Michael Studinger from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a part of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, led a team that discovered four large, subglaical lakes that for the first time the link these water bodies locked beneath miles of ice, to fast flowing ice streams in Antarctica. Together with colleagues from NASA, the University of New Hampshire and the University of Washington, the scientists found that, in four separate cases, lakes appear to contribute to the formation of ice streams.

Not only did they find four new lakes, but they discovered that the lakes coincide with the origin of tributaries of the Recovery Glacier. Upstream of the lakes, the ice sheet moves at just 2 to 3 meters per year; downstream the flow increases to nearly 50 meters per year. Bell and Studinger conclude that the lakes provide a reservoir of water that lubricates the bed of the stream to facilitate ice flow and prevent the base of the sheet from freezing to the bedrock.

“It’s almost as if the lakes are capturing the geothermal energy from the entire basin and releasing it to the ice stream.” said Bell. “They power the engines that drive ice sheet collapse. The more we learn about them, the more we realize how important they are.”

Eurekalert