Never-before-seen shapes up to 1,300 feet long discovered beneath Antarctic ice
Scientists have found unusual patterns beneath West Antarctica’s Doston Ice Shelf that could help them understand how glaciers erode. The team used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to create the most detailed picture ever of the glacier’s underside.
The ROV traveled over 600 miles along the underside of the ice and discovered teardrop shapes up to 1,300 feet long. These shapes were found below Dotson Ice Shelf in West Antarctica in 2022. The team published their findings in the journal Science Advances.
“The ice cycle in Antarctica depends on how it melts from beneath,” said study lead author Anna Wåhlin, a professor of oceanography at the University of Gothenburg. “We need to understand this process to know how ice gets from the continent into the ocean.”
Dotson Ice Shelf is a 30-mile-wide chunk of floating ice seven times the size of New York City. It’s part of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which has dramatically calving glaciers that could cause sea levels to rise by approximately 11 feet if they eventually drive the entire sheet to collapse.
The team sent the ROV below the ice to scan the glacier’s underside with sonar, building up the most extensive and complete picture of the glacier’s underside ever. They found that the glacier is melting fastest at points where underwater currents are eroding its base and fractures running through the glacier are helping the melt to travel up to the surface.
But they also discovered teardrop shapes emerging from peaks and valleys in the ice, some of which are up to 1,300 feet long. The researchers believe these weird patterns are created by uneven melting as water moves with Earth’s spin across the glacier’s underside.
The result is a spiral flow pattern called an Ekman spiral, which is most commonly seen when winds travel over surface water but can also be created by water traveling over ice.
To follow up on the survey, the researchers returned with the ROV in January 2024, but it got lost and disappeared beneath the ice shelf. The team’s next goal is to return with a new submersible and continue surveying the uncharted depths beneath.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/antarctica/never-before-seen-shapes-up-to-1-300-feet-long-discovered-beneath-antarctic-ice