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- Scientists have discovered a huge lake bed hidden deep within the thick Greenland ice sheet.
- The lake would have covered 2,700 square miles, although it is difficult to know how old it really is.
- Sediment analysis would reveal the age of the lake, but it would take a lot of work to make that happen.
Greenland, despite its name, is not that green. It is actually covered in ice; this was always the mind-blowing thing the teachers liked to reveal when they told us that Greenland and Iceland are basically the opposite of what their names would suggest, and some of that ice is incredibly thick. Understanding what might be hidden under that ice has been a challenge for scientists, but new research suggests that Greenland hides something big.
Using data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge, researchers have been able to determine that there is a colossal lake bed deep beneath Greenland’s thick ice sheet. The research was published in the journal Earth and planetary science charts.
Multiple data sources were used to make the discovery, and NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which provides a three-dimensional representation of Arctic ice, helped reveal the huge basin beneath the ice that was likely once a lake that covered an area of about 2,700 square miles. Needless to say, that’s an absolutely huge area, and such a large lake would have dominated the landscape before it was covered in thick ice.
“This could be an important repository of information, in a landscape that at the moment is totally hidden and inaccessible,” Guy Paxman, lead author of the work, said in a statement. “We are working to try to understand how the Greenland ice sheet has behaved in the past. It is important if we want to understand how it will behave in the coming decades ”.
The discovery is great, but there is one very important thing missing, and that is an estimate of the age of the lake bed. This is particularly difficult because the Greenland ice did not come one day and it never moved. The ice sheet gradually took over the land, advanced to new areas, retreated at times, and then advanced again. This occurs over tens of millions of years, making it difficult to guess when the lake was present.
Determining exactly when the lake was “alive”, so to speak, is actually possible, but it will take a lot of work. According to the researchers, the sediment on the lake bed would help reveal its age and would also offer clues as to when there was ice in the region and when there was not. That would go a long way toward explaining some of the peculiarities of Greenland’s geography that remains hidden under mile-thick ice. There are no plans to try drilling to get to the sediment, but now that scientists know the lake bed is there, it may not be long before someone decides to try.
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in virtual reality, wearable devices, smartphones, and future technology. Most recently, Mike served as the technology editor at The Daily Dot, and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com, and in many other print and web media. His love for the reports is second only to his addiction to games.
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