As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Researchers were stunned when they found a big, ghostly figure that all of a sudden appeared in satellite pictures of Greenland 13 years earlier. The icy phantom was produced by an anxiety in the snow-covered surface area, which formed when an underground lake situated straight below the figure collapsed.

The blobby specter, which appeared like a shapeless figure waving up at area, was identified in the Flade Isblink ice cap– an approximately 3,300-square-mile(8,550 square kilometers) ice cap resting on Greenland’s northern most shoreline, deep within the Arctic Circle. The icy hole was around 2 miles (3 kilometers) long and simply over 1 mile( 2 km) throughout its largest point, and was 230 feet (70 meters)deep when it initially appeared, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory

The creepy structure, which scientists likewise described as “the mitten” due to its glove-like shape, formed eventually in between Aug. 16 and Sept. 6, 2011, when the location was obscured by cloud cover in satellite images.

In a 2015 paperscientists exposed that the anxiety appeared when a subglacial lake quickly drained pipes of water, leaving an underground cavern that promptly collapsed. At the peak of this draining pipes occasion, researchers approximated that 7,600 cubic feet (215 cubic meters) of water left the lake every second.

This occasion was “perhaps the first recorded instance of a rapid drainage of a subglacial lake in Greenland,” Kelly Brunta glaciologist at NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory who was not associated with the research study, informed NASA’s Earth Observatory in 2015. Most of comparable immersed lakes in the nation are thought about to be really steady, she included.

Related: See all the very best pictures of Earth from area

Scientists continued to keep track of the anxiety, and in 2022, a follow-up research study exposed that the subglacial lake had actually been gradually filling up given that 2012. By 2021, the flooring of the anxiety had actually increased by 180 feet (55 m)– increasing to 50 feet (15 m) listed below the surrounding ice– regardless of a 2nd, smaller sized draining pipes occasion in 2019.

Scientist at first thought most of the water that reentered the lake originated from surface area meltwater that dripped down listed below the ground. Computations later on exposed that meltwater might just account for 65% of the water in the lake, implying some other unidentified source of water was likewise at work.

It is still uncertain why the subglacial lake drained pipes so rapidly in 2011. Scientists believe that human-caused environment modification might have played a function.

A number of subglacial lakes in Antarctica have likewise gone through comparable collapses recentlyand researchers fear that the leaving water might even more speed up ice loss in some locations.

Harry is a U.K.-based senior personnel author at Live Science. He studied marine biology at the University of Exeter before training to end up being a reporter. He covers a large range of subjects consisting of area expedition, planetary science, area weather condition, environment modification, animal habits, development and paleontology. His function on the upcoming solar optimum was shortlisted in the “top scoop” classification at the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) Awards for Excellence in 2023.

Many Popular

Find out more