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(CNN) - A new study shows that the deepest point on land is under the Denman Glacier in East Antarctica. The glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, mapped the area only to discover that the channel under the glacier was much deeper than they had imagined.
The canal is about 3.5 km below sea level, but there is no ocean water there. Instead, it is filled with ice flowing from the inside of the ice sheet to the coast. The canal is approximately 100 km long and 20 km wide, according to the study.
This new discovery was presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Dr. Mathieu Morlighem, associate professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, leads this project.
"The biggest challenge of the project is that Antarctica is HUGE!" He said excitedly. "It's bigger than the United States and Mexico together."
Morlighem and his team used a new technology called BedMachine to make this discovery. They developed a new generation ice sheet model, but it did not behave as expected.
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“After months of research, we realized that it was not because we lacked important processes. It was because the topography of the bed under the ice lacked many important features such as canals, ridges, valleys, etc., ”he said.
And due to the size of the area they were trying to map, the process was very slow.
The team combined radar measurements with high-precision surface movement data from satellites and snow accumulation of regional climate models, to obtain a good estimate of the bed shape where it had not been measured.
"We apply this mapping technique to the entire ice sheet, and we discover this very deep valley hidden beneath the ice sheet," said Morlighem.
He said that one of the challenges they faced during the project was to gather all available data, as there were many radar surveys, but made by different institutions in different countries.
In addition, they had some surprises along the way.
"The main ones are these ridges across the Transantactic Mountains, the Denman Glacier, but also some other glaciers that feed the Ronne ice shelf that appear to be more vulnerable than we thought," said Morlighem.
Morlighem says that climate change could affect this region.
“Now we have to monitor this glacier carefully. If your grounding line, where the ice begins to float, begins to withdraw into this deep canyon, it could be removed quickly due to a mechanism called instability of the sea ice sheet, ”he said. “The glaciers that flow over beds that deepen inland are unstable, so the glacier may have to withdraw completely until the bed rises again, which will cause a significant increase in sea level. It could be one of the most vulnerable sectors in East Antarctica, which contains much more ice than Western Antarctica. ”
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But there is good news regarding climate change. The study says that the main glaciers that flow through the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and through Victoria Land are protected by broad stabilizing topographic ridges near their grounding lines, which reflect the surrounding topographic relief.
"All the glaciers that flow through the Transantarctic mountains have a pronounced ridge in their channels," said Morlighem. "These ridges were unknown and make this sector of the ice sheet extremely resistant to increase ocean-induced melting."
In other words, he said: "If the Ross ice shelf destabilizes, it should not lead to the collapse of East Antarctica."
Antarctica