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Thanks to its usefulness as an indicator of how badly humans are
messing up the Earth with global warming, scientists like to
keep a pretty close eye on the ice in Antarctica. Now, a massive
hole the size of Lake Superior has appeared many miles inland
from where the ice meets the ocean, and scientists have little
concrete explanation as to why it's there.
The hole, which is called a polynya, is incredibly puzzling
because of its odd behavior. This isn't the first time it's been
spotted, having appeared last year for a brief period as well,
and long before that it was detected back in the 1970s. However,
it disappeared for several decades before showing back up,
throwing a huge kink in many scientific explanations for its
existence.
"At that time, the scientific community had just launched the
first satellites that provided images of the sea-ice cover from
space," Dr Torge Martin of the GEOMAR Research Division explains
of its initial discovery many decades ago. "On-site measurements
in the Southern Ocean still require enormous efforts, so they
are quite limited."
The current best guess is that warmer salt water from deep under
the ice has managed to squeeze its way through the cold layer of
fresh water that typically insulates it, causing a warm patch
and ultimately melting the ice and forming a huge gap. That's a
fairly straightforward explanation, but it doesn't fully address
the odd timing of the hole, including its 40-year absence and
seemingly spontaneous rebirth.
As scientists continue to hone their climate models and perfect
their predictions, they're getting closer to being able to
accurately simulate the exact process at work, but a full
explanation may still be years away.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/10/12/massive-hole-just- opened-up-in-antarcticas-ice-and-scientists-cant-explain-it.html
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