Antarctica is the fifth largest continent in the world and it is always covered in ice. Because of this, many people must have thought that all the water sources on this continent are frozen. But a group of international scientists have discovered a 460km long underground river in this continent. More interesting is that one of the scientists involved is from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu.
The river under the ice layer was first discovered decades ago. At first scientists thought it was a short small river system but after more in-depth study it actually consisted of a network of interconnected underground lakes.
This discovery brings bad news to climate change because the water flowing at high pressure becomes a lubricant for the ice sheets that then move to the sea. Scientists now have more complete data to predict the level of ice melting in the future.
The research paper written by C. F. Dow, N. Ross, H. Jeofry, K. Siu and M. J. Siegert was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. One of the authors of the study is Hafeez Jeofry who is a fellow at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu who is currently completing his PhD studies in the field of cryosphere geophysics at Imperial College London.