Subglacial lakes can influence the speed at which ice flows into oceans and can cause flooding and landslides in mountainous regions.
The world’s first inventory of subglacial lakes has been compiled by an international team led by the University of Sheffield, providing a comprehensive directory of where the lakes are and how they are changing in a warming climate.
Subglacial lakes can form underneath ice sheets or glacial valley regions. They can play a critical role in the speed at which ice flows into oceans and, when on land in mountainous regions, could pose a major risk to populations downstream if they were to drain and cause flooding and landslides.
It is believed that there are many thousands of subglacial lakes worldwide but, until now, their details were not collectively held and there was no clear picture on the size, stability and characteristics of the lakes.
An international team of researchers led by Dr Stephen Livingstone, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, has now catalogued data on almost 800 lakes in Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland, as well as in glacial valley regions such as the Alps.
Continue reading at University of Sheffield
Image via University of Sheffield
