Something could be stirring late beneath the ice sheets of Greenland .
Researchers have recently attain there might be a obscure “ dingy river ” , possibly as long as the Ohio River , implant within an surreptitious valley beneath the Greenland ice sheet , transporting gallons of meltwater from central Greenland to the northerly sea-coast in pitch darkness .
Presenting their survey at theAmerican Geophysical Unionannual meeting last Monday , scientists from Hokkaido University in Japan and the University of Oslo in Norway said they establish the so - call " dark river " using simulations that map how subglacial H2O might course throughout the concealed feature beneath the ice .
“ Though considerable uncertainty remains , the consequence are consistent with a present - day active long subglacial river system that , if sustain with further radar bed observation , could be over 1,600 kilometers long , ” the researchers explain ina summary of the researchfor their presentation at the AGU .
Speaking toLive Science , study source Christopher Chambers , a researcher at Hokkaido University , explainedthat the river was around 300 to 500 meters ( 980 to 1,640 feet ) below the open , a depth which he notes is very unexpected for a feature of speech this long . flux with the squad ’s simulation body of work , this hints that it could be a site with dynamic erosion or sediment deposition , possibly from the flow of a river .
It ’s indecipherable how potent the water rate of flow might be , however , it belike depends on the time of year . During the winter , when the glaciers are unattackable and tough , the river is likely to be just a trickle . However , as glacial melt increases in the spring , the river could become quite the force to be reckoned with .
Slowly but surely , new applied science and sharper method are revealing the worlds hiddenbeneath our planet ’s glacier .
As part of NASA’sOperation IceBridge , radar - arm sheet fly above the Arctic , Antarctica , and Alaska , amass data on the acme , profoundness , thickness , flow rate , and variety of sea ice , glaciers , and ice sheets . Through mapping the bedrock under the Greenland ice canvass , the NASA project also detailed the presence of a subglacial canyon – which they named the " grand canyon of Greenland ” – in the area that stretches from Greenland ’s interior to the Arctic Ocean in the north . They suggest that it may have once been a river organisation , but today transport subglacial meltwater across the island .
