Scientists Just Discovered a Huge River Hidden Under Antarctica

As the world warms up, scientists have to factor in a lot of different variables.

The huge river that runs for over 300 miles deep beneath the ice needs to be taken into account by researchers.

The new waterway has the potential to affect how the ice above it flows.

Airborne radar surveys and water flow modeling were used by the researchers to peer through the ice. There is ice from both the east and west ice sheets in the ocean.

The region where this study is based holds enough ice to raise the sea level by 4.3 meters.

The base of the ice is linked to how quickly the ice is melting. This process could be influenced by the newly discovered river system.

Water can flow under ice sheets. The melting of ice sheets from beneath the glacier can be done with the help of geothermal heat and friction and deep crevasses. There is more seasonal variation in ice thickness in the northern part of the world.

There is enough melting at the base of the ice sheets for rivers to form according to a new study. The ice melting process can be accelerated by channels of fresh water at the point where the glacier meets the sea.

The processes that lead to the melting of ice at the North and South Poles are complex. More accurate models of future ice loss can be generated thanks to discoveries like the one made here.

Neil Ross says that previous studies have looked at the interaction between the edges of ice sheets and ocean water.

"However, the discovery of a river that reaches hundreds of kilometers inland driving some of these processes shows that we cannot understand the ice melt completely without considering the whole system."

If melting rates continue to increase and summers are warm enough to create surface melt and moulins, this might have a significant impact on the hidden rivers that already exist.

The feedback loops can be caused by all these factors. One way this could happen is through deep water flows that cause the ice to move quicker over dry land.

The team wants to use the techniques that have been used here in other parts of the continent to see what else they don't know about.

We thought the lakes were isolated from each other when we first found them.

If there weren't so many meters of ice on top of them, there would be whole systems down there.

The research has appeared in a journal.