Scientists discover immense landscape beneath Antarctica

Thirty-two thousand square kilometers. This is the size of the landscape of green hills and valleys which has just been detected under the Antarctic ice by American and British researchers, we learn in a study published Tuesday October 24 in Nature communications. To achieve this discovery, it was necessary to send radio waves into the ice, flown over by plane, then analyze the echoes, a technique called radio-ultrasound survey.

“This is an undiscovered landscape that no one has ever laid eyes on.”

Stewart Jamieson, lead author of the study published in “Nature Communications”

to AFP

This area, larger than Belgium, was once home to forests, and probably animals. According to Stewart Jamieson, she remained intact for more than 34 million years, when Antarctica began to freeze over. It resisted the retreat of ice during ancient periods of warming, such as the Pliocene, 3 to 4.5 million years ago.

A barely discovered territory and already threatened

Today, global warming poses risks to this hidden world, although it lies miles from the edge of the ice sheet, which is supposed to protect it from exposure to light.

Impossible to anticipate the “tipping point“climate of a”uncontrolled reaction” of melting ice, warns Stewart Jamieson. Especially since a study published on Monday October 23 by researchers from British Antarctic Survey has warned that the melting of the ice sheet in neighboring West Antarctica is likely to accelerate significantly in the coming decades. And this, even if the world respected its commitments to limit global warming.