The geography of Antarctica is dominated by its south polar location and, thus, by ice. The Antarctic continent, located in the Earth's southern hemisphere, is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle. It is washed by the Southern Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It has an area of more than 14.2 million km2. Antarctica is the largest ice desert in the world.
Lake Vostok is the largest of Antarctica's 675 known subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold, beneath Russia's Vostok Station under the surface of the central East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is at 3,488 m (11,444 ft) above mean sea level. The surface of this fresh water lake is approximately 4,000 m (13,100 ft) under the surface of the ice, which places it at approximately 500 m (1,600 ft) below sea level.
Vostok Station is a Russian research station in inland Princess Elizabeth Land, Antarctica. Founded by the Soviet Union in 1957, the station lies at the southern Pole of Cold, with the lowest reliably measured natural temperature on Earth of −89.2 °C. Research includes ice core drilling and magnetometry. Vostok was named after Vostok, the lead ship of the First Russian Antarctic Expedition captained by Fabian von Bellingshausen. The Bellingshausen Station was named after this captain.
A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where gravitational pressure decreases the pressure melting point of ice. Over time, the overlying ice gradually melts at a rate of a few millimeters per year. Meltwater flows from regions of high to low hydraulic pressure under the ice and pools, creating a body of liquid water that can be isolated from the external environment for millions of years.
Hodgson Lake is a perennially ice-covered freshwater lake, which is about 2 km (1.2 mi) long by about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide. It is located within the southern part of Alexander Island, west of Palmer Land in Antarctica, at approximately 72°S latitude and 68°W longitude. This lake has a 93.4 m (306 ft) deep water column that lies sealed beneath a 3.6 to 4.0 m thick perennial lake ice. The lake is an ultra-oligotrophic lake with very low nutrient content and very low productivity. There is no detectable life living in Hodgson Lake. The lake extends eastward into George VI Sound and the George VI Ice Shelf making it adjacent to the sound. The northern side of this lake is bounded by the Saturn Glacier, which flows east into George VI Sound. The lake lies next to and southeast of Citadel Bastion, a pre-eminent mountain on Alexander Island.
Lake Ellsworth is a natural freshwater liquid subglacial lake located in West Antarctica under approximately 3.4 km (2.1 mi) of ice. It is approximately 10 km long and is estimated to be 150 m (490 ft) in depth. The lake is named after the American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth. The surface of the lake itself is located over 4,593 feet (1,400 m) below sea level.
Radioglaciology is the study of glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps and icy moons using ice penetrating radar. It employs a geophysical method similar to ground-penetrating radar and typically operates at frequencies in the MF, HF, VHF and UHF portions of the radio spectrum. This technique is also commonly referred to as "Ice Penetrating Radar (IPR)" or "Radio Echo Sounding (RES)".
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is the United Kingdom's national polar research institute. It has a dual purpose, to conduct polar science, enabling better understanding of global issues, and to provide an active presence in the Antarctic on behalf of the UK. It is part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). With over 400 staff, BAS takes an active role in Antarctic affairs, operating five research stations, one ship and five aircraft in both polar regions, as well as addressing key global and regional issues. This involves joint research projects with over 40 UK universities and more than 120 national and international collaborations.
The Gamburtsev Mountain Range is a subglacial mountain range located in East Antarctica, just underneath the lofty Dome A, near the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility. The range was discovered by the 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1958 and is named for Soviet geophysicist Grigoriy A. Gamburtsev. It is approximately 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) long, and the mountains are believed to be about 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) high, although they are completely covered by over 600 metres (2,000 ft) of ice and snow. The Gamburtsev Mountain Range is about the same size as the European Alps. As of 2008, it was unknown how the mountains were formed due to the lack of data. Studies conducted during the International Polar year demonstrated that ancient plate collisions produced a core that was rejuvenated in the early to mid-Mesozoic. The main features of the range formed before 34 million years ago, when the area was covered by the present ice sheet. Current models suggest that the East Antarctic ice sheet was formed from the glaciers that began sliding down the Gamburtsev range at the end of the Eocene. Vostok Subglacial Highlands form an east extension of Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains.
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
Rutford Ice Stream is a major Antarctic ice stream, about 290 kilometres (180 mi) long and over 24 kilometres (15 mi) wide, which drains southeastward between the Sentinel Range, Ellsworth Mountains and Fletcher Ice Rise into the southwest part of Ronne Ice Shelf. Named by US-ACAN for geologist Robert Hoxie Rutford, a member of several USARP expeditions to Antarctica; leader of the University of Minnesota Ellsworth Mountains Party, 1963-1964. Rutford served as Director of the Division of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation, 1975-1977.
There are hundreds of antarctic lakes in Antarctica. In 2018 researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research published a study they claimed cast doubt on the earlier estimate that there were almost 400 subglacial antarctic lakes. Antarctica also has some relatively small regions that are clear of ice and snow, and there are some surface lakes in these regions. They called for on the ground seismic studies, or drilling, to determine a more reliable number.
Lake Whillans is a subglacial lake in Antarctica. The lake is located under the Whillans Ice Stream at the southeastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in the west of the continent. The lake surface is 800 m (2,600 ft) beneath the surface of the ice and the lake covers an estimated area of 60 km2 (20 sq mi). Lake depths measured thus far have been around 2 metres. Its temperature is −0.49 °C, below 0 °C because of the high pressure.
Helen Amanda Fricker is a glaciologist and professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego where she is a director of the Scripps Polar Center. She won the 2010 Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica.
Jemma L Wadham is a British glacial biogeochemist.
Robin Elizabeth Bell is Palisades Geophysical Institute (PGI) Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a past President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2019–2021. Dr. Bell was influential in co-ordinating the 2007 International Polar Year and was the first woman to chair the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board. She has made numerous important discoveries with regard to subglacial lakes and ice sheet dynamics, and has a ridge, called Bell Buttress, in Antarctica named after her.
Frank Jean-Marie Léon Pattyn is a Belgian glaciologist and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He is best known for developing ice-sheet models and leading model intercomparisons.
Mercer Subglacial Lake is a subglacial lake in Antarctica covered by a sheet of ice 1,067 m (3,501 ft) thick; the water below is hydraulically active, with water replacement times on the order of a decade from the Ross Sea. Studies suggest that Mercer Subglacial Lake as well as other subglacial lakes appear to be linked, with drainage events in one reservoir causing filling and follow-on drainage in adjacent lakes.
Kirsteen Jane Tinto is a glaciologist known for her research on the behavior and subglacial geology of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Salty subglacial lakes are controversially inferred from radar measurements to exist below the South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD) in Ultimi Scopuli of Mars' southern ice cap. The idea of subglacial lakes due to basal melting at the polar ice caps on Mars was first hypothesized in the 1980s. For liquid water to persist below the SPLD, researchers propose that perchlorate is dissolved in the water, which lowers the freezing temperature, but other explanations such as saline ice or hydrous minerals have been offered. Challenges for explaining sufficiently warm conditions for liquid water to exist below the southern ice cap include low amounts of geothermal heating from the subsurface and overlying pressure from the ice. As a result, it is disputed whether radar detections of bright reflectors were instead caused by other materials such as saline ice or deposits of minerals such as clays. While lakes with salt concentrations 20 times that of the ocean pose challenges for life, potential subglacial lakes on Mars are of high interest for astrobiology because microbial ecosystems have been found in deep subglacial lakes on Earth, such as in Lake Whillans in Antarctica below 800 m of ice.
