Scientists Confirm Seasonal Glacial Melt Lakes Now Forming In E Antarctica - 8,000 since 2000

In a new study, scientists who study the largest ice mass on Earth — East Antarctica — have found that it is showing a surprising feature reminiscent of the fastest melting one: Greenland. More specifically, the satellite-based study found that atop the coastal Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica’s Dronning Maud Land, large numbers of “supraglacial” or meltwater lakes have been forming — nearly 8,000 of them in summer between the year 2000 and 2013. Moreover, in some cases, just as in Greenland, these lakes appear to have then been draining down into the floating parts of the glacier, potentially weakening it and making it more likely to fracture and break apart.

This is the first time that such a drainage phenomenon has been observed in East Antarctica, the researchers say — though it was previously spotted on the warmer Antarctic Peninsula and was likely part of what drove spectacular events there like the shattering of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002.

When it comes to East Antarctica, however, “that’s the part of the continent where people have for quite a long time assumed that it’s relatively stable, there’s not a huge amount of change, it’s very, very cold, and so, it’s only very recently that the first supraglacial lakes, on top of the ice, were identified,” said Stewart Jamieson, a glaciologist at Durham University in the U.K. and one of the study’s authors.

The study was led by Emily Langley of Durham, who worked along with Jamieson and Chris Stokes from her university and Amber Leeson of Lancaster University. The work was recently published online by Geophysical Research Letters.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/17/these-stunning-blue-lakes-just-gave-us-a-new-reason-to-worry-about-antarctica/?utm_term=.54cb4e6425d8