International Team to Explore Antarctic Sublglacial Lake Ellsworth
04.03.2009 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Flora & Fauna, Other, Antarctic
An international team of scientists led by British researchers has beengiven approval to explore Lake Ellsworth, a subglacial lake hidden deepbeneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, during the 2012-2013 Antarcticwinter season. Buried under 3 km of ice sheet, Lake Ellsworth has beenisolated from the outside world for hundreds of thousands of years andcould be home to various species of undiscovered microorganisms.
The consortium of researchers from nine UK universities, the British Antarctic Survey and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton was founded by the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) as a follow-up to the success of an International Polar Year project to map the extent and depth of subglacial Lake Ellsworth in early 2008.
After acquiring and developing the technologies, including a hot water drill and probe, the team will bore through the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to sample water from the lake in the search for unique life forms and extract sediment from the lake bed to find clues as to how the climate has changed over the past several millennia. Preventing contamination of the lake, however, will be a challenge.
Although finding any species in the extreme environment of this cold, dark subglacial lake isolated from the outside world for millennia would be a major achievement in itself, there are very strong reasons to that these microorganisms will have unique adaptations that have helped them to survive in this unusual and potentially hostile habitat.
If the mission succeeds, it will help scientists to gain a better understanding of issues such as life in extreme environments and climate change.
