For millions of years under the Antarctic ice, a vast secret landscape of hills and valleys sculpted by ancient rivers has been “frozen in time,” according to scientists. The British and American researchers cautioned that although this environment (larger than Belgium!) has remained unspoiled for more than 34 million years, human-driven global warming may threaten to reveal it.
Professor Stewart Jamieson, Durham University glaciologist and main author of an extensive paper regarding the issue, stated, “It is an undiscovered landscape – no one has laid eyes on it.” The region, which covers 12,000 square miles (32,000 square kilometers), was formerly home to woods, trees, and possibly even animals. However, after the ice formed, Jamieson claimed that it “froze in time.”
Thus, according to Jamieson, the researchers “traced out the valleys and ridges” more than 1.6 miles below the surface using already-existing satellite photographs of the surface. He continued, saying that the rippling ice surface is a “ghost image” that softly falls over these sharper features. When paired with radio-echo sounding data, a picture of a landscape sculpted by rivers that featured steeply sloping valleys and pointed hills resembling those found elsewhere on Earth’s surface materialized. Jamieson compared the scene to Snowdonia in northern Wales, saying it was like “gazing out the window of a long-haul flight and seeing a mountainous country below.”
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that sunlight last reached this secret world, but researchers are certain that it was at least 14 million years ago. According to Jamieson, his “hunch” is that it was last exposed when Antarctica initially froze over, which occurred more than 34 million years ago. The team thinks there may be more ancient landscapes beneath the Antarctic ice that have not yet been uncovered, as some of them had previously discovered a lake the size of a city.
The study’s authors suggested that their recently found environment might be threatened by global warming. They stated in the journal Nature Communications that “we are now on course to develop atmospheric conditions similar to those that prevailed” between 14 million and 34 million years ago, when the temperature was 3 to 7 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.
Jamieson emphasized that any potential exposure would be “a long way off” because the terrain was hundreds of kilometers inland from the ice’s edge. He said there remained hope because melting ice during earlier warming periods, such as the Pliocene epoch, which occurred 3 to 4.5 million years ago, did not expose the landscape. However, he added, it was still unknown what might cause a “runaway reaction” of melting.
The study was published the day after experts issued a warning, stating that even if global warming mitigation goals are met, the melting of the nearby west Antarctic ice sheet is expected to pick up significant speed in the upcoming decades.
It is undoubtedly shocking to witness the effects of climate change on our global environment. We humans have been perpetuators of this event, and it appears we also have the responsibility to mitigate it.
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