Humans have been around for over 200,000 years, yet 65% of the Earth is still unexplored. Among them, parts of Antarctica. Antarctica’s ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth, but what lies beneath it? That was largely a mystery, until now!
Glaciologists at the University of California discovered an unbelievably deep canyon beneath Antarctica as they were analyzing the ice sheet’s topography. The study was first published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The ice-filled canyon reaches 2.2 miles below sea level, making it nearly half as deep as Mount Everest is tall. At 2.2 miles deep, the icy trench is the deepest point on continental Earth. The only valleys deeper are found in the ocean.
Today, half the Antarctic ice sheet is more than 5 kilometres (3 miles) from any bed topography measurement, and major data gaps exist in several parts of this frigid continent. Now, a detailed map of Antarctica’s peaks and valleys has uncovered the deepest land canyon on Earth, in a narrow region known as Denman Glacier (Video below).
Previously, the lowest recorded point on dry land was the shore of the Dead Sea at 413 meters below sea level, but the bottom of the newly revealed canyon is eight times deeper.
The technology used to discover this canyon is so accurate that it was able to debunk some of the older maps that had once suggested shallower canyons. Scientists were able to see a more detailed version of other trenches in the bed under the Recovery Glaciers, which were actually hundreds of metres deeper than previously thought.
This is undoubtedly the most accurate portrait yet of what lies beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet. The previously unknown features have “major implications for glacier response to climate change,” the authors wrote. The discovery made many understand the potential risks that climate change will bring on-board.
Understanding how ice flows across Antarctica is key to our predictions of how it will melt as the planet warms due to climate change. The last time the world experienced carbon dioxide concentrations above 400 parts per million, a third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted, causing sea levels to rise by as much as 20 metres.
If all of the continent’s ice were to melt, sea levels would rise by approximately 200 feet, turfing millions worldwide from their homes.
Sources: Nature Geoscience, National Post, The Sun, Science Alert
Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
