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Glaciology

Ice-sheet plumbing in Antarctica

Nature volume 440, pages 1000–1001 (2006)Cite this article

It's not easy to work out what is going on beneath four kilometres of ice. But remote imaging has enabled the discovery of the long-distance discharge of water from one subglacial lake to another in Antarctica.

It is old news that there are lakes under the Antarctic ice sheet1 — indeed, Earth's seventh largest lake, Lake Vostok2, lies deep beneath the Antarctic ice. But are the lakes that form beneath great ice sheets long-lived and stable, collecting and spilling water at a steady rate? Or are they subject to cycles of filling and rapid flushing, like those that form beneath Iceland's ice caps3?

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Figure 1: Cyclic filling and flushing of a subglacial lake system.

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  1. Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, 6339 Stores Road, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, British Columbia, Canada

    Garry K. C. Clarke

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  1. Garry K. C. Clarke
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Clarke, G. Ice-sheet plumbing in Antarctica. Nature 440, 1000–1001 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/4401000a

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