"Nov. 17, 2013 — It wasn't what they were looking for but that only made the discovery all the more exciting."
In
January 2010, a team of scientists set up a seismograph machine in West Antarctica.
It was the first time scientists had placed instruments that would work
year-round, even in the coldest parts of Antarctica. The machine measures
disturbances created by earthquakes to make pictures of the ice and rock deep
inside West Antarctica. The goal is to weigh the ice sheet and reconstruct
Antarctica’s climate history. In order for them to do that, they would need to
know how the mantle would react to a huge ice sheet. They needed to know
whether the mantle was “hot and fluid or cool and viscous”. The seismic
information will allow them to find out the properties of the mantle. Amanda
Lough, a PhD student, found two seismic bursts in January 2010 and March 2011.
She started to investigate the area. Eventually, it was found that there is a
volcano forming a kilometer beneath Antarctica. “The discovery of the new as
yet unnamed volcano is announced in the Nov. 17 advanced online issue of Nature
Geoscience.”
At first,
they didn’t know what was under Antarctica, but Lough noticed that what was
under Antarctica resembled mountains. Soon, she realized that they were
actually volcanoes. The seismic activities were low in frequency suggesting
that they weren’t part of plate tectonics. They looked at airborne radar and
observed that there’s elevation in bed topography in the same area where the
seismic activities took place. They also showed a layer of ash buried under the
ice. This layer was only found in the area where the volcano is located. The
ash layer sets the age of the eruption at 8,000 years ago. They think that the
ash might’ve come from Mount Waesche, but they don’t know when was the last
time the volcano was active.
In
Antarctica most mountains are not volcanoes, but that doesn't apply in
West Antarctica. It's believe that there might be a hotspot under the volcano. It’s believed that the volcano will eventually erupt; they do not
believe that the volcano will punch through a kilometer of ice, though.
However, they do believe that it will melt a lot of ice, creating many lakes.
This will increase the rate of ice-mass that is lost in West Antarctica.
Sources:
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