Image: Bigworldtale

Huge Antarctic Pond Suddenly Disappears

Antarctic lake disappeared, here's where the water went.
Antarctic lake disappeared, here's where the water went.

As you might have heard, because of the global warming, astounding things are happening in some of the coldest places on our planet, incidents that we wouldn’t even notice if they wouldn’t be noticed from the sky.

An amazing phenomenon of a lake in Antarctica which suddenly faded away in the coldest season of the year in 2019 was recently discovered. It’s been estimated that the lake had somewhere between 600 and 700 million cubic meters of water. So, this huge amount of water can not simply vanish without a trace. In such circumstances, the academics state that probably there was too much for the ice layer that struggled to hold the reservoir.

In an interview from the University of Tasmania, glaciologist Roland Warner claims that his team believes that there was a cleft in the ice shelf that sustained the lake, which allowed the water to drain into the ocean below.

Image: European Space Talks

So, you might think that such a big quantity of water, would obviously rise up somewhere. But, there was not the case here, because that area where the lake was situated, lifted high up to 36 meters.

This kind of events should be taken into consideration, because the volume of the lake that has just disappeared is going to be attached to the volume of the ocean water, which will take part in the sea level rise.

Some of the scientists involved in this study say that the surface of the water that might melt will double in 30 years from now on and such transformations will be studied cautiously, especially because the fracture of that lake seems to reopen in the summer of 2020.

Elizabeth G. Cole
Elizabeth used to be an English teacher, but she left her old job so she could raise her children and get more involved with saving the environment. She is passionate about the Planet and loves to cover this topic, but also enjoys to write about family and children activities.