What lies beneath the ice of Antarctica?

Researchers used satellite imagery and the physics of ice movement to reconstruct what the continent might look like beneath the icy surface.

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Until now, much of what lies beneath the icy surface of Antarctica was unknown, Photo: Getty Images
Until now, much of what lies beneath the icy surface of Antarctica was unknown, Photo: Getty Images
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Mark Poynting, BBC Climate

Ervan Rivo, BBC Visualisation Team

A new map has revealed previously unseen details of the relief beneath the Antarctic ice, which scientists say could significantly advance our understanding of this frozen white continent.

Researchers used satellite imagery and the physics of ice movement to reconstruct what the continent might have looked like beneath the icy surface.

They have found evidence of thousands of previously undiscovered hills and ridges, and they say their maps of some of Antarctica's hidden mountain ranges are clearer than ever before.

Although these maps are not completely accurate, researchers believe the new details could shed light on how Antarctica will respond to climate change and what that means for sea level rise.

Contemporary images from other parts of the world are shown, whose landscapes are similar to those of Antarctica.

"It's like if you had an analogue film camera that left visible 'grain' on the footage, now you have a digital image with a high zoom that clearly shows what's really happening," Helen Ockenden, the study's lead author and a researcher at the University of Grenoble-Alpes in France, told BBC News.

Thanks to satellites, scientists have gained a good understanding of Antarctica's ice surface, but what lies beneath the ice is unknown.

In fact, more is known about the surface of some planets in our solar system than about the "underground" of Antarctica - the topography beneath the ice sheet.

But now researchers have what they believe is the most complete and detailed map of that underwater terrain ever made.

"I'm so excited to be looking at this and seeing the entire bottom of Antarctica at once," says Professor Robert Bingham, a glaciologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and co-author of the study.

"I think that's incredible."

Traditional ground-based or airborne measurements have used radar to peer beneath the ice, which is up to 3 miles (4,8 kilometers) thick in some places.

However, measurements were often taken along individual tracks tens of kilometers apart, so scientists had to guess what was in between and fill in the gaps.

"If you imagine the Scottish Highlands or the Alps being covered in ice and the only way to understand their shape is to do occasional flights a few kilometers apart, there's no way you'd see all those sharp mountains and valleys that we know exist," says Bingham.

So the researchers took a new approach, combining satellite data on the ice surface and the physics of ice movement, and compared the results with old radar tracks.

"It's a bit like kayaking on a river, and there are rocks under the water, and sometimes there are whirlpools on the surface that show you where the rocks are," Ockenden explains vividly.

"And ice, of course, moves differently than water, but still when ice crosses a ridge or hill in rocky ground, it manifests itself in the topography of the surface, but also in the speed of movement," he adds.

Although Antarctica's major mountain ranges were previously known, scientists' new approach has revealed tens of thousands of previously unknown hills and ridges, as well as much more detail about some of the mountains and canyons buried beneath the ice.

"I think it's really incredibly interesting to look at all these new landscapes and see what's out there," says Ockenden.

"It's like when you see a topographic map of Mars for the first time and you think, 'Wow, this is really interesting, this looks a bit like Scotland,' or 'This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.'"

One particularly interesting discovery is a deep channel cut into the Antarctic seafloor, in an area known as the Maud Subglacial Basin.

The channel is on average 50 meters deep, six kilometers wide and stretches for almost 400 kilometers, which is approximately the distance as the crow flies between London and Newcastle.

The explorer's new map probably won't be the last.

It is not completely accurate because it is based on assumptions about ice movement patterns, and much remains to be discovered about the rocks and sediments beneath the ice sheet.

However, other scientists also believe that these maps, combined with further research from land, air, and space, represent a very important step forward.

"This is a really useful product," said Dr Peter Fretwell, a senior scientist at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, who was not involved in this study but worked extensively on previous mapping.

"They give us an opportunity to fill in the gaps between those studies," he added.

A more detailed understanding of all the ridges, hills, mountains, and channels could improve computer models that predict how Antarctica might change in the future, researchers say.

The shape of the terrain beneath the ice largely determines how fast glaciers move and how quickly they can retreat in cold conditions. rising temperatures.

And this is very important because the rate of ice melting in Antarctica in the future is considered one of the biggest unknowns in climatology.

"This study gives us a better picture of what will happen in the future and how quickly the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will contribute to global sea level rise," Fretwell says.

The study was published in a scientific journal Science.

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