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\t\t\t\t\t\t19\/09\/2025
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Hidden beneath the biggest ice mass on Earth, hundreds of subglacial lakes form a crucial part of Antarctica\u2019s icy structure, affecting the movement and stability of glaciers, and consequentially influencing global sea level rise.<\/p>\n
Thanks to a decade of data from the European Space Agency\u2019s CryoSat satellite, researchers have identified 85 previously unknown lakes several kilometres under the frozen surface surrounding the South Pole. This increases the number of known active subglacial lakes below Antarctica by more than half to 231.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0research<\/a>, published today in Nature Communications, is significant because active subglacial lakes, which drain and refill on a cyclical basis, offer a rare insight into what is happening far below the surface, at the base of the ice sheet. The research also identified new drainage pathways underneath the ice sheet, including five interconnected subglacial lake networks.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tAntarctic subglacial lake inventory<\/a><\/p>\n Lead author of the study, Sally Wilson, a doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, explained that what we know about subglacial lakes and water flow is limited because they are buried under hundreds of metres of ice.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is incredibly difficult to observe subglacial lake filling and draining events in these conditions, especially since they take several months or years to fill and drain. Only 36 complete cycles, from the start of subglacial filling through to the end of draining, had been observed worldwide before our study. We observed 12 more complete fill-drain events, bringing the total to 48.\u201d<\/p>\n \tWhy satellites matter<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tESA’s ice mission<\/a><\/p>\n This is where satellites were able to contribute valuable data to the research. Observations from the CryoSat mission, which was launched in 2010, were able to produce a dataset spanning from 2010 to 2020.<\/p>\n ESA\u2019s CryoSat satellite, part of ESA\u2019s FutureEO programme, measures the thickness of polar sea ice and monitors changes in the height of ice sheets over Greenland and Antarctica and glaciers worldwide.\u00a0Its main instrument is a radar altimeter, which can detect tiny variations in the height of the ice surface as well as measure sea surface height.<\/p>\n Using a decade of observations from CryoSat, researchers detected localised changes in the height of Antarctica\u2019s icy surface, which rises and falls as the lakes fill and drain at the base of the ice sheet. They could then detect and map subglacial lakes and monitor their filling and draining cycles over time.<\/p>\n