THE MYSTERIOUS LAKES

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??

This is what  happened in Greenland’s lakes or disappearing lakes. ’’The images would show the lakes there one day and gone the next day!”,said the first author of new study,Laura Stevens,A glaciology doctoral candidate with MIT-WHOI joint program.

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.

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

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