Subglacial lakes may not be isolated ecosystems

From Baltimore, at the American Geophysical Union meeting

Large volumes of water occasionally flow between the lakes that lie deep beneath Antarctica’s kilometers-thick ice sheet, a new analysis suggests.

In late 1996, radar altimeters on a European Space Agency satellite began to measure a drop in elevation across a 600-square-kilometer area of eastern Antarctica. During the next 16 months, the surface elevation fell about 3 meters, indicating a loss of water from a lake that probably lies beneath the region, report Andrew Shepherd of the University of Edinburgh and Duncan J.