Antarctica

[Icarus]

A huge glacier almost the size of England is located on the west coast of Antarctica.  It is the Thwaites glacier and it is in deep trouble as are we humans.  It is melting rapidly. 

  Would you believe that the virus has influenced the world so far away and in so remote a place as the Twaites glacier?  ..............the pandemic has halted the critical research needed to assess the probable result of the glacier activity.  Medical help in such a remote region is impossible. Therefore the project has been abandoned until the virus danger is diminished.

See this site for details.    tc.copernicus.org

[Randy]

The best we can hope for, once this pandemic is under control, is to know how fast it's melting and how high the oceans on the coastal lands will fare. There isn't anything we can do but watch and wait.

[Icarus]

And a major glacier of Iceland has broken into two pieces. We are in the deep do-doo I fear.

[Tank]

The Greenland ice-shield is now in a catastrophic melting feedback loop. As it melts it loses height which means its top get lower and therefore warmer so it melts quicker. It's only a matter of how long it takes to melt.

[Recusant]

I like it when I can find a relevant thread to revive. Yes folks it's time for yet another oddball science post. When isn't it, after all? 

"Mysterious Frozen Lake Is a Time Capsule From Millions of Years Ago" | Science Alert

A living time capsule frozen in the depths of Lake Enigma in Antarctica contains a unique ecosystem that has been isolated from the rest of the world since its surface permanently froze.

Now, scientists have retrieved samples of the unique microbes, which have survived in a massive chamber of liquid fresh water below more than 9 meters (30 feet) of solid ice.

This ecosystem has potentially existed within the ice blister for 14 million years, which may have been when the lake first froze over at the end of a much warmer period of Earth.

Lake Enigma was thought to be frozen right through, since it's in Antarctica's Northern Foothills, nestled between Amorphous and Boulder Clay glaciers, a region with an average temperature of -14 °C (6.8 °F).

Led by microbiologists Francesco Smedile and Violetta la Cono from the Italian Institute of Polar Sciences, and geophysicist Stefano Urbini from Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, the research team used ground-penetrating radar to probe the lake's composition, detecting the concealed liquid bubble and drilling for samples of the water within.

Special care was taken to prevent contamination of this sheltered biome: an electric drill was used for the first 3 meters of ice, while the remaining layers were bored with thermal head melt and hot water drilling. These use sterilized and heated water formed from ice crumbs collected during the mechanical drilling phase as a kind of liquid drill bit.



Underwater and surface photography of Lake Enigma and its surroundings.
Image credit: Smedile et al., Communications Earth & Environment, 2024

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"The perennially ice-covered Lake Enigma, Antarctica supports unique microbial communities" | Nature Communications Earth & Environment

Abstract:

Northern Foothills of Victoria Land, Antarctica contains numerous hydrological formations, ranging from small surface streams and ponds fed by glacial or snow meltwater to permafrost lakes containing briny pockets.

Here we describe the discovery of a massive body of unfrozen stratified oligotrophic water in Lake Enigma, a permanently ice-covered lake previously thought to be frozen from top to bottom. A remarkable feature of the Lake Enigma microbial ecosystem is the presence, and sometimes even dominance, of ultrasmall bacteria belonging to the superphylum Patescibacteria, a group apparently absent from Antarctic lakes in the well-studied McMurdo Dry Valleys.

Cyanobacteria are virtually absent from Lake Enigma ice and water column although they are well represented in its extensive and diverse benthic microbial mats. Collectively, these features reveal a new complexity in Antarctic lake food webs and demonstrate that in addition to phototrophic and simple chemotrophic metabolisms, both symbiotic and predatory lifestyles may exist.