This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Scientists have been tracking large-calibration changes in the Antarctic ice sheet in contempo decades, only these changes are normally the result of known processes. The latest change is something tougher to explain. A behemothic hole the size of Lake Superior has opened up in the ice on Antarctica's Weddell Ocean, and researchers aren't sure what could crusade it.

There's a name for this kind of feature–an area of open up h2o completely enclosed past sea ice is known every bit a "polynya." Having a name doesn't hateful scientists have an caption for this gap in the ice, though. Polynyas are usually constitute in coastal regions of Antarctica, but this hole is far from the border of the ice pack where the water ice is much thicker, and it'south the centre of winter in Antarctica.

The pigsty that has opened up is several hundred kilometers across with an area of about 80,000 foursquare kilometers (about 30,888 foursquare miles). Interestingly, this isn't the offset polynya to open up up in this region. A smaller polynya was observed in the same surface area in the 1970s, just the exact scale of that fissure was not recorded. Then, it disappeared for 40 years only to reappear last yr. Its reappearance well-nigh a month ago marks the 2nd sequent year for the Weddell Ocean polynya.

A view of the polynya past ACE CRC, Australia.

Many volition suspect this has something to do with climate change, which is the main culprit for many of the sea water ice changes in Antarctica. Nevertheless, scientists take non yet confirmed that. The Weddell Sea polynya itself could force more changes in the ice, though. The melting of sea ice causes a localized temperature contrast between the ocean and temper, which drives a convection current. H2o on the surface cools and becomes denser from contact with the frigid air, causing it to sink down. As a outcome, warmer h2o rises to the surface. This can help maintain or even expand a polynya.

Researchers from the Princeton-based Antarctic ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modelling (SOCCOM) group are conducting a study of the polynya that seeks to answer many of the questions. Until then, this hole in the ice will remain mysterious. However, nosotros've got a good run a risk of understanding what'due south going on this time. Satellite data provides much more accurate measurement than nosotros had in the 1970s, and other ground-based technologies generate much more information than scientists in by decades would accept had.