Nations Race to Drill Into Hidden Antarctic Waters

[longknife]

Discovery online posted the following:

On Christmas day the British Antarctic Survey announced that it is pulling out of the race to drill into the pristine waters of an underwater lake in Antarctica, but Russia and the United States are hot on their heels to explore similar subglacial waters.

These underground bodies of water are sealed below two miles of glacial ice and, in some cases, have existed unperturbed for tens of millions of years. Researchers from the three nations aim to drill into these hidden lakes in hopes of ffinding brand new forms of microbial life. The adaptations of these resilient organisms to harsh conditions may shed light on the evolution of life on Earth, and potentially other planets, too.

Read more @ Nations Race to Drill Into Hidden Antarctic Waters : 80beats

 

[Mr. H.]

They should be looking for more hydrocarbons.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says mebbe dey's space aliens hidin' under the ice?...

Russian Scientists Might Have Found New Life Under Antarctic Ice
March 08, 2013 - Russian scientists say they might have found new life forms in a fresh-water Antarctic lake that has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years.

Bacterial DNA was discovered in samples of water the Russians took from Lake Vostok last year, when they finally broke through nearly four kilometers of Antarctic ice after a decade of intermittent drilling. One of the Russian scientists analyzing the water samples - Sergei Bulat of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute - told the RIA Novosti news agency that after excluding all possible terrestrial contaminants, the research team has concluded that the bacterial DNA found in the lake's icy darkness "does not match any known species in world databases."

Russian scientists are close to drilling in to the prehistoric sub-glacier Lake Vostok, which has been trapped under Antarctic ice for 14 million years, Jun. 29, 2010.

For now, Bulat said, they are calling the life forms "unidentified" or "unclassified." They plan to take more samples from the lake to confirm their find. But Bulat said he believes the discoveries will give new information about how life can survive in extreme conditions - not only on Earth, but also on distant worlds such as Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

British and U.S. research teams have been working to similar ends at other subglacial lakes near the southern pole. The British abandoned their quest last year, but the American team recently drilled through to Lake Whillans and took samples of what they called "living cells" from the icy water. They are still analyzing the find to identify what kinds of bacteria they are and how they manage to live without light or air.

Source

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says if all dat ice melts, it gonna shift the polar axis...

NASA spots worrisome Antarctic ice sheet melt
May 12,`14 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting a glacially slow collapse in an unstoppable way, two new studies show. Alarmed scientists say that means even more sea level rise than they figured.

The worrisome outcomes won't be seen soon. Scientists are talking hundreds of years, but over that time the melt that has started could eventually add 4 to 12 feet to current sea levels. A NASA study looking at 40 years of ground, airplane and satellite data of what researchers call "the weak underbelly of West Antarctica" shows the melt is happening faster than scientists had predicted, crossing a critical threshold that has begun a domino-like process. "It does seem to be happening quickly," said University of Washington glaciologist Ian Joughin, lead author of one study. "We really are witnessing the beginning stages."

It's likely because of man-made global warming and the ozone hole which have changed the Antarctic winds and warmed the water that eats away at the feet of the ice, researchers said at a NASA news conference Monday. "The system is in sort of a chain reaction that is unstoppable," said NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, chief author of the NASA study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Every process in this reaction is feeding the next one." Curbing emissions from fossil fuels to slow climate change will probably not halt the melting but it could slow the speed of the problem, Rignot said.

This undated handout photo provided by NASA shows the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctic. Two new studies indicate that part of the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting a slow collapse in an unstoppable way. Alarmed scientists say that means even more sea level rise than they figured.

Rignot, who also is a scientist at the University of California Irvine, and other scientists said the "grounding line" which could be considered a dam that stops glacier retreat has essentially been breached. The only thing that could stop the retreat in this low-altitude region is a mountain or hill and there is none. Another way to think of it is like wine flowing from a horizontal uncorked bottle, he said. Rignot looked at six glaciers in the region with special concentration on the Thwaites glacier, about the size of New Mexico and Arizona combined. Thwaites is so connected to the other glaciers that it helps trigger loss elsewhere, said Joughin, whose study was released Monday by the journal Science.

Joughin's study uses computer simulations and concludes "the early-stage collapse has begun." Rignot, who used data that showed a speed up of melt since the 1990s, said the word "collapse" may imply too fast a loss, it would be more the start of a slow-motion collapse and "we can't stop it." Several outside experts in Antarctica praised the work and said they too were worried. "It's bad news. It's a game changer," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wasn't part of either study. "We thought we had a while to wait and see. We've started down a process that we always said was the biggest worry and biggest risk from West Antarctica." The Rignot study sees eventually 4 feet (1.2 meters) of sea level rise from the melt. But it could trigger neighboring ice sheet loss that could mean a total of 10 to 12 feet of sea level rise, the study in Science said, and Rignot agreed.

The recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change don't include melt from West Antarctic or Greenland in their projections and this would mean far more sea level rise, said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. That means sea level rise by the year 2100 is likely to be about three feet, he said. Even while the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting, the much larger East Antarctic ice sheet seems stable because it is cooler, Scambos said. Climate change studies show Antarctica is a complicated continent in how it reacts. For example, just last month Antarctic sea ice levels - not the ice on the continent - reached a record in how far they extended. That has little or no relation to the larger more crucial ice sheet, Scambos and other scientists say.

AP Newswire | Stars and Stripes