Scientists say they have discovered a vast, hidden landscape of hills and valleys cut by ancient rivers that has been “frozen in time” beneath Antarctic ice for millions of years. British and American researchers have warned that this region, which is larger than Belgium, potentially remained untouched for more than 34 million years, but human-caused global warming could threaten to expose it.

Emphasizing that the researchers did not use new data, just a new approach, Jamieson added, “The interesting thing was that it was clearly hiding there.”

According to Jamieson, the land beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars.

The main way to “see” what’s underneath is to send a plane over the ice with radio waves and analyze the echoes. This method is called radio echo sounding. But doing this across the entire continent (Antarctica is larger than Europe) will be a huge challenge.

Researchers used existing satellite images of the surface to “monitor valleys and ridges” deeper than two kilometers (1.6 miles), Jamieson said. He added that the wavy surface of the ice is a “ghost image” that slowly passes over these sharp details.

When combined with radio echo sounding data, an image of a river landscape with deep valleys and sharp-peaked peaks similar to those found on Earth emerged. Comparing the view to the Snowdonia region in North Wales, Jamieson said it was like looking out the window of a long-haul flight and seeing a mountainous region below.

Spanning 32,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles), this region was once home to trees, forests, and possibly animals.

But then the ice arrived and “frozen in time,” Jamison said.

It’s difficult to determine exactly when sunlight last touched this hidden world, but researchers are confident it happened at least 14 million years ago. Jamieson said his “guess” is that this last occurred 34 million years ago, when Antarctica first froze over.

Some researchers have previously discovered a city-sized lake beneath Antarctic ice, and the team believes there are other ancient landscapes yet to be discovered.

climate threat

The study’s authors said global warming could pose a threat to the newly discovered landscape.

“We were on track to create atmospheric conditions similar to those that prevail now,” they wrote in the journal Nature, 14 to 34 million years ago, when the air was 3 to 7 degrees Celsius (about 7 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than it is today.

Jamieson emphasized that the landscape is hundreds of kilometers from the ice edge, so any potential exposure would be “remote.” He added that there is hope that the retreat of ice from past warming events, such as the Pliocene period three to 4.5 million years ago, has left the landscape exposed. But it remains unclear what the tipping point will be for an “emergency response” to the meltdown, he said.

The study was published a day after scientists warned that melting of the nearby West Antarctic ice sheet will accelerate significantly in coming decades even if the world meets its goal of limiting global warming. Source