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Climate change

Ancient Antarctic fjords

Nature volume 474, pages 46–47 (2011)Cite this article

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The East Antarctic ice sheet, the largest in the world, lies seemingly frozen in time. Discovery of a rugged landscape buried beneath the thick ice provides evidence of a more dynamic past. See Letter p.72

Ice sheets reflect 90% of incoming solar radiation and are of considerable mass, and hence affect Earth's global geophysical parameters. To gain insight into the mechanisms of the potentially long response times of ice sheets, it is necessary to study them from a long-term geological perspective. In Antarctica, reconstructing ice-sheet drainage patterns at times of past ice-sheet minima is a challenge: today 98% of the continent is buried under several kilometres of ice. Airborne geophysical surveys that penetrate the ice have helped to meet that challenge, and have contributed significantly to what is known about Antarctica's bed topography. In reconstructing the subglacial topography of the deep Aurora Subglacial Basin in East Antarctica, Young et al.1 (page 72 of this issue) have made a notable discovery by revealing subglacial landscapes in astonishing detail.

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Figure 1: Ancient Antarctic topography.

S. PASSCHIER/NSF

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  1. Sandra Passchier is in the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey 07043, USA.,

    Sandra Passchier

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  1. Sandra Passchier
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Correspondence to Sandra Passchier.

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Passchier, S. Ancient Antarctic fjords. Nature 474, 46–47 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/474046a

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