Day 33: East Antarctica’s lost mountains

  

Artist's rendering of the Antarctica Gamburstev Province (AGAP) project. Credit: Zina Deretsky / NSF

There’s a whole new world buried under more than two miles (4.5 km) of ice in East Antarctica — or at least a whole new mountain range. 

An international team of researchers, braving insanely bone-chilling conditions, has used twin-engine light aircraft, along with a network of seismic instruments that would span Texas, to map the mammoth range. They’re comparing the newly decribed Gamburstev Mountains to the Alps, and they report that the province occupies 10 million square kilometers (4 million square miles) deep under comparatively flat ice. 

“Working cooperatively in some of the harshest conditions imaginable, all the while working in temperatures that averaged -30 degrees Celsius [-22 degrees F], our seven-nation team has produced detailed images of the last unexplored mountain range on Earth,” Michael Studinger, of Columbia University, said in a press release. “As our two survey aircraft flew over the flat white ice sheet, the instrumentation revealed a remarkably rugged terrain with deeply etched valleys and very steep mountain peaks.”

Research camp of Columbia University's Michael Studinger, in Antarctica. Credit: Michael Studinger

The findings raise additional questions about the role of the Gamburtsevs in birthing the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, said Fausto Ferraccioli, a geophysicist from the British Antarctic Survey: ”if the ice sheet grew slowly then we would expect to see the mountains eroded into a plateau shape. But the presence of peaks and valleys could suggest that the ice sheet formed quickly–we just don’t know. Our big challenge now is to dive into the data to get a better understanding of what happened.”

The discovery appears to confirm earlier findings that a vast aquatic system of lakes and rivers exists beneath the ice sheet of Antarctica, a continent that is the size of the U.S. and Mexico combined.

The new data will help scientists to determine the origin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. It will also help them to understand the role the subglacial aquatic system plays in the dynamics of ice sheets, which will, in turn, help reduce scientific uncertainties in predictions of potential future sea level rise. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that it’s difficult to predict how much the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to sea-level rise because so little is known about the behavior of the ice sheets.

Researchers inside the ice cave on the Erebus ice tongue. Credit: Michael Studinger

The project enjoyed support from the National Science Foundation. Collaborators came from Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology and Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research.

Source: National Science Foundation and Michael Studinger’s Web page.