New map tracks hidden fjords beneath Antarctic ice sheet

London, June 2 (ANI): A team of international scientists has created the first-of-its-kind topographic map of one of the last uncharted regions of Earth - the Aurora Subglacial Basin, an ice-buried lowland in East Antarctica larger than Texas.

The map, developed using ice-penetrating radar, reveals some of the largest fjords or ice cut channels on Earth, providing important insights into the history of ice in Antarctica.

This new information will help develop models to forecast how the sheet will change in the future and its impact on global sea levels.

"We knew almost nothing about what was going on, or could go on, under this part of the ice sheet and now we've opened it up and made it real," said Duncan Young, research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and lead author on the study.

"We chose to focus on the Aurora Subglacial Basin because it may represent the weak underbelly of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice and potential source of sea-level rise on Earth," said Donald Blankenship, principal investigator for the ICECAP project, a multinational collaboration using airborne geophysical instruments to study the ice sheet.

Previous research using ocean sediments and computer models showed that the ice sheet grew and shrank widely and frequently, from about 34 to 14 million years ago, causing sea level to fluctuate by 200 feet. This process has since stabilized.

The new map reveals vast channels cut through mountain ranges by ancient glaciers that mark the edge of the ice sheet at different times in the past, sometimes hundreds of kilometers from its current edge.

"We're seeing what the ice sheet looked like at a time when Earth was much warmer than today," said Young. "Back then it was very dynamic, with significant surface melting. Recently, the ice sheet has been better behaved."

According to Young, knowing what the ice sheet looked like in the past gives us an idea of how it might appear in the future, but he does not foresee it shrinking as dramatically in the next 100 years.

The finding is published in Nature. (ANI)