This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of utilise.

Scientists have been tracking large-scale changes in the Antarctic water ice sheet in recent decades, merely these changes are ordinarily the result of known processes. The latest alter is something tougher to explain. A giant hole the size of Lake Superior has opened up in the water ice on Antarctica's Weddell Sea, and researchers aren't certain what could crusade information technology.

There'due south a proper name for this kind of feature–an area of open water completely enclosed by sea ice is known as a "polynya." Having a proper name doesn't mean scientists take an explanation for this gap in the ice, though. Polynyas are ordinarily constitute in littoral regions of Antarctica, but this hole is far from the edge of the ice pack where the ice is much thicker, and it's the middle of winter in Antarctica.

The pigsty that has opened upward is several hundred kilometers across with an area of about 80,000 foursquare kilometers (about 30,888 square miles). Interestingly, this isn't the first polynya to open up in this region. A smaller polynya was observed in the same area in the 1970s, just the exact calibration of that crack was not recorded. Then, it disappeared for twoscore years only to reappear last year. Its reappearance about a month ago marks the second consecutive year for the Weddell Sea polynya.

A view of the polynya by ACE CRC, Australia.

Many will doubtable this has something to practice with climate change, which is the main culprit for many of the sea ice changes in Antarctica. All the same, scientists accept not yet confirmed that. The Weddell Sea polynya itself could force more than changes in the ice, though. The melting of sea ice causes a localized temperature dissimilarity betwixt the ocean and temper, which drives a convection electric current. Water on the surface cools and becomes denser from contact with the frigid air, causing information technology to sink downwardly. As a result, warmer h2o rises to the surface. This can assist maintain or fifty-fifty aggrandize a polynya.

Researchers from the Princeton-based Southern Bounding main Carbon and Climate Observations and Modelling (SOCCOM) group are conducting a study of the polynya that seeks to answer many of the questions. Until and then, this hole in the water ice will remain mysterious. Yet, we've got a skillful chance of understanding what's going on this fourth dimension. Satellite data provides much more authentic measurement than we had in the 1970s, and other ground-based technologies generate much more information than scientists in past decades would have had.