News

Durham expert to explore subglacial Antarctic Lake

(3 March 2009)

Antarctic Lake Ellsworth

A Durham University expert is joining an international team of scientists set to explore one of the planet’s last great frontiers - an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet.

Buried under 3 km of ice, the lake – the size of Lake Windermere (UK) – may have been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years and could contain unique forms of life. The team hopes the exploration will yield vital clues about life on Earth, climate change and future sea-level rise. Following the success in early 2008 of an International Polar Year project to map the extent and depth of subglacial Lake Ellsworth, the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) is funding a consortium of multidisciplinary researchers from nine UK universities, the British Antarctic Survey and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. During the next five years the researchers will acquire and develop the technologies needed for this ambitious project. During the 2012-2013 Antarctic winter season the research team will go ‘deep field’ into West Antarctica to sample water from the lake in the search for tiny life forms never before seen; and to extract sediment from the lake bed to find clues as to how the climate has changed over many millennia. In such an extreme environment, the mere presence of life in itself would be a major scientific discovery, but there are very strong reasons to expect that such microorganisms would possess special or unique adaptations to this unusual and potentially hostile habitat. Mike Bentley from Durham University’s Department of Geography will co-lead the component of the project that will retrieve the first ever sediment core from a subglacial lake. "Retrieving the sediment core for laboratory analysis here in Durham will involve drilling through over 3km of the Antarctic ice, using a hot water drill, and then dropping a coring device through the 160m depth of the lake water beneath the ice. "This gives us an opportunity to try and get an undisturbed record of past climate from sediments near the middle of the ice sheet. Until now we've only been able to work around the edges of Antarctica where the sediments are churned up by advances and retreats of the ice margin. The sediments on the bed of Lake Ellsworth may have escaped such disturbance.” David Blake, who is Head of Technology and Engineering at the British Antarctic Survey and is involved in the project, said: “This project is a great scientific challenge and the technology required to drill 3 km through the ice without contaminating the lake is equally ambitious. Over the next few years we will build a hot water drill and probe, and make preparations to transport a sophisticated operation deep into the interior of West Antarctica. We really are at the frontiers of scientific exploration.” The exploration of subglacial lakes is part of an international effort to understand key global issues such as life in extreme environments and climate change.