100 Billion Tons Of Water Found Under Greenland Ice Sheet

Greenland Snow Aquifer Hides 100 Billion Tons Of Water

Big surprises still hide beneath the frozen surface of snowy Greenland. Despite decades of poking and prodding by scientists, only now has the massive ice island revealed a hidden aquifer.

In southeast Greenland, more than 100 billion tons of liquid water soaks a slushy snow layer buried anywhere from 15 to 160 feet (5 to 50 meters) below the surface. This snow aquifer covers more than 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) — an area bigger than West Virginia — researchers report today (Dec. 22) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"We thought we had an understanding of how things work in Greenland, but here is this entire storage system of water we didn't realize was there," said Richard Forster, lead study author and a glaciologist at the University of Utah.

This finding was made back on Dec. 23rd, but I did not see where it had been posted here on ATS yet, which surprised me

The discovery will help scientists better understand the fate of Greenland's annual surface melt, which contributes to sea level rise. When the summer sun warms the Arctic island, a giant water world of stunning blue lakes and streams appears atop the ice. Tracking this surface runoff helps scientists account for ice lost to melting each year. Until now, researchers thought most of this water went to the ocean or refroze on the ice. Now they've found a new hiding place.

"This throws an additional complexity into the system," Forster told LiveScience.

Big surprises still hide beneath the frozen surface of snowy Greenland. Despite decades of poking and prodding by scientists, only now has the massive ice island revealed a hidden aquifer.

Greenland’s snow hides 100 billion tons of water




[My apologies if this is a duplicate.....]