"Hidden deep below the ice sheet that covers Antarctica, scientists have discovered a massive amount of water.
The groundwater system, found in deep sediments in West Antarctica likely to be the consistency of a wet sponge, reveals an unexplored part of the region and may have implications for how the frozen continent reacts to the climate crisis, according to new research.
"People have hypothesized that there could be deep groundwater in these sediments, but up to now, no one has done any detailed imaging," said the study's lead author, Chloe Gustafson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in a news statement.
"Antarctica contains 57 meters (187 feet) of sea level rise potential, so we want to make sure we are incorporating all of the processes that control how ice flows off of the continent and into the oceans. Groundwater is currently a missing process in our models of ice flow," she added via email."
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