World’s Deepest Canyon On Land Discovered Under Antarctica’s Ice

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Soon we may know more what lies beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet. Scientists have discovered the world’s deepest point on land under Denman Glacier in East Antarctica.

The ice-filled canyon reaches 3.5km (11,500ft) below sea level. Canyons of this size have previously only been discovered in the ocean.

Credit: Mathieu Morlighem – UCI

How Deep Is The Ocean?

The average depth of the ocean is about 12,100 feet. The deepest part of the ocean is called the Challenger Deep and is located beneath the western Pacific Ocean in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which runs several hundred kilometers southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam. Challenger Deep is approximately 36,200 feet deep. It is named after the HMS Challenger, whose crew first sounded the depths of the trench in 1875.  The lowest point on Earth not covered by ocean is 8,382 feet (2,555) meters below sea level. That spot is in the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica, buried under lots and lots of ice.

World’s Deepest Canyon On Land In Antarctica

The finding of the world’s deepest canyon on land is illustrated in a new map of the White Continent that reveals the shape of the bedrock under the ice sheet in unprecedented detail.

The BedMachine map reveals ridges and valley’s beneath Antarctica’s ice. Credit: Mathieu Morlighem – UCI

The lowest exposed land on our planet, at the Dead Sea shore id only 413 m (1,355 ft) below sea level.

“This is undoubtedly the most accurate portrait yet of what lies beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet,” said Dr. Mathieu Morlighem from the University of California who has worked on the project for six years.

“The trenches in the oceans are deeper, but this is the deepest canyon on land”,” Morlighem explained.

“The Antarctic ice sheet has been losing mass over the past decades through the accelerated flow of its glaciers conditioned by an increase in ocean thermal forcing.

One of the main controls on the glacier evolution is bed topography. Despite major advances in subglacial bed topography mapping over the past decades using nadir-looking radar sounding profiles, significant sectors remain poorly known and critical spatial details are missing, especially in the proximity of grounding lines,” researcher write in their scientific paper.

Much of what is in BedMachine Antarctica may not at first glance look that different from previous bedmaps. However, on closer inspection, there are some fascinating details that will generate considerable discussion among polar experts.

See also:

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Scientists used a new technique to reveal the shape of the bedrock under Antarctica’s ice. The project known as Bedmachine, calculates the hidden profile of the landscape using data on how much ice enters a valley and how quickly it’s moving. These calculations reveal the depth and roughness of the valley floor.

“We present a novel, high-resolution, physical description of Antarctic bed topography and ice thickness that uses a mass conservation approach combining all available ice thickness data with high-resolution ice velocity mapping to alleviate the spatial resolution limitations of prior products. We enforce a smooth, seamless transition in ice thickness at the grounding line to match ice shelf thickness reconstructed using a calibrated firn depth correction.

The glaciers that are mapped with this technique cover more than 71% of the total ice discharge of the continent. The results reveal significant basal topographic features not known previously,” researchers wrote.

In the past planes have flown over Antarctica sending down microwave pulses searching for rocks beneath the ice, but this new method appears to be much more efficient.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff