Hobart

Seminar abstract

Thursday 18 January 2007, 7 pm (Tas time)
CSIRO Auditorium, Hobart

Dr Helen Fricker
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
La Jolla, California, USA

Bubbling under the ice streams: Antarctic sub-glacial plumbing mapped from space

Over 150 recently discovered sub-glacial lakes, as large as 14000 km2 in area, lie deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Satellite laser altimeter measurements of the ice sheet collected from part of West Antarctica between 2003 and 2006, reveal numerous regions of temporally varying elevation. This is the surface expression of water movement within these sub-glacial lakes. A major, previously unknown sub-glacial lake is observed to drain over ~3 years, while elsewhere a similar volume of water is being stored sub-glacially. These observations reveal a widespread and dynamic sub-glacial hydrologic system of interconnected lakes and rivers. This may exert an important control on ice flow and may even impact ice sheet stability under a changing climate.

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Location:
CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
To schedule a seminar, contact:
Karen Wild-Allen, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5010
Piers Dunstan, (Biological seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
(03) 6232 5382
Annabel Ozimec (seminar administrator) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5462
Sandra Zicus, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 7888
Margaret Hazelwood, Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies (IASOS) University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2971

Last updated 23/01/07