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| A View of the Greenland Lake, PHOTO CREDIT: www.Huffingtonpost.com |
It must have been an amazing experience, in our
childhood ,to see the water
evaporating from the container when its
kept on flames. A bowl full of water gone in a few minutes.But what if a
billions of gallons of water just vanish in a couple of hours??
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| Pictorial understanding of the phenomenon.PHOTO CREDITS; www.huffingtonpost.com |
The reason for this phenomenon was explained that the
movement of Greenland ice-sheet can cause large cracks to swallow billions of
gallons of water in a few hours.Later researchers determined that this was
possibly because of the giant hydro fracture that was formed directly beneath
the lake basin and stretch to the bed of ice-sheet,draining the lake. ”this is
less likely to occur at higher elevation” , say scientists.
The north lake present in south western Greenland was
the first lake where this was reported, A mile wide crater was left at the
lake,after this within the span of a week. Lan Howat,professor at Ohio state
university who studied the crater said the findings were catastrophic.
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| Catastrophic view of lake.PHOTO CREDITS; www.huffingtonpost.com |
A team from Cornell university discovered the second
lake and found that they were emptied
and filled again as a stored heat is produced which can alter the composition
of ice.this is further increased when overflowing melt water holds back the ice
sheet drainage system which creates a blowout.
“If enough water is pouring down into the Greenland ice-sheet for us to see the same glacial lake empties and refills again then
there must be so much of latent heat released under the ice that we had expect it
to change the large scale behavior of ice sheet”,Micheal Bevis ,an earth
scientist at Ohio state university said.
“The fact that our lakes
appear to have been stable for atleast several decades and
then drained in the matter of hours after a few hot summers,may signal a
fundamental change happening to the icesheet ” said Howat.
SOURCE:BBC SCIENCE NEWS
