British Exploration of Subantarctic Lake
16.01.2008 - Logistics, Other
A team led by Dr. Andy Smith from the British Antarctic Survey is currently conducting a series of experiments investigating Lake Ellsworth, a sub-glacial lake in West Antarctica. This research could shed new light on the history of life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise.
According to the International Polar Year project's Principal Investigator Prof. Martin Siegert, Lake Ellsworth is important "because it's likely to have been isolated from the surface for hundreds of thousands of years. Radar measurements made previously from aircraft surveys suggest that the lake is connected to others that could drain ice from the West Antarctic Ice sheet to the ocean and contribute to sea-level rise."
First results show that the lake is 105 metres deep and thus an ideal site for future exploration of microbial life and climate records. The next phase will be to build a probe, drill down into the lake and explore and sample the lake water.
Roughly 150 lakes have been discovered beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. Conducting research on these lakes is valuable for various reasons:
- water acts as a lubricant to the ice above and could influence how the ice sheet flows
- unusual life forms could be found in lakes and yield clues on the evolution of life in harsh conditions
- lake-floor sediments could help understand past climate
- lakes could contribute to the understanding of the extraterrestrial environment on Europa (one of Jupiter's moons)
