According to new research, a huge underground river that melts ice from the surface of Greenland could flow in a state of permanent darkness.
The ‘Dark River’, nicknamed, is a fictional waterway that, if it really exists, extends 1000 kilometers (620 miles) from the interior of Greenland to the northwestern part of the country to Peterman Fjord.
“The results are consistent with the long-awaited subtropical river,” says Christopher Chambers, an ice sheet model at Hokkaido University in Japan, but significant uncertainty remains. “
Suggested valley and possible river. (Chambers et al., Cryosphere, 2020)
That uncertainty is also largely due to significant intervals of radar data from aerial surveys over the Greenland ice sheet, which has for years explored fragments of what appears to be an expansive, subglacial valley system beneath large parts of Greenland.
Numerous studies over the past few decades have suggested that such trenches, valleys or “mega-canyons” may be hidden in subglacial environments, and have also floated the idea that liquid water may flow to the bottom of facilities.
However, due to the distance of the data – given the specificity of the air flights mapping this pping deep outline – it is not known if all the valleys are connected in a long, snaking river, or just in parts of a broken event, let alone how the water behaves. There.
“We don’t know how much water is available, if any, to flow along the valley, and if it actually flows out of the Peterman fjord or freezes, or out of the valley,” Chambers says.
In a new study designed as a ‘thought experiment’, Chambers and his team explored the imaginary possibility of continuous running in a long river, even though the valley was torn apart.
This kind of possibility, he says, is plausible, given the sections seen in modeling it may now be an illusion – phantom elevation as a result of misleading modeling in data-sparse regions rather than regional features.
The authors write in their new paper, “Increases when data is interpolated to fill gaps between where reliable data is received by radar.” “This suggests that growing in the valley may not be real.”
In the new modeling, the researchers assumed that the Dark River was indeed a continuous feature. Based on that view, the simulations suggest that a waterway flows into the ocean from the central part of Greenland, with liquid water passing through an uninterrupted passage.
“With its length, the valley path moves slowly below the surface of the ice surface, reducing the high pressure of the ice, which could enable the flow of water on its path.”
While the findings remain speculative for now, the researchers believe that future aerial surveys may one day be able to confirm the simulations.
If so, it will not only tell us that the Dark River is real, but it also means that we have reached a new level of being able to model the behavior of the Greenland ice sheet – a very complex and mysterious body predicting future sea level. Wide impact on growth.
These findings are reported Cryosphere.
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