Scientists Find Dozens of Volcanoes

Scientists Find Dozens of Volcanoes Hiding Beneath Antarctic Ice

This new discovery makes Antarctica the most volcanically concentrated region in the world.

Getty Michael Nolan / robertharding
 
By Avery Thompson

If you wanted to find the place with the most volcanoes, you might think to head to an island in the Pacific or along the east coast of Africa, but you'd actually need to take a trip to the South Pole. Scientists have found more than 90 volcanoes buried underneath the Antarctic ice, making that region the highest concentration of volcanoes in the world.

Icy Antarctica might seem like the last place to find volcanoes, but in fact the region is very volcanically active. Researchers previously knew of about 50 volcanoes on the continent, and this new discovery almost triples the number of known volcanoes. The researchers suspect that there might be even more volcanoes hiding on the seafloor.

The reason these volcanoes remained hidden for so long is because they're buried underneath the ice. Some of these volcanoes are sitting under more than a mile of ice, and it required a detailed study using ice-penetrating radar, satellite records, and geological information to find them.

Many scientists are worried about what could happen to sea levels if one or more of these volcanoes wakes up. Further, there's a risk that current warming could set off the volcanoes: scientists are worried that melting ice would relieve some of the pressure, making eruptions easier. And it's not like Antarctic ice needs any help melting. Several large icebergs have broken off of ice shelves over the past few months, and the most recent one threatens to destabilize the entire ice shelf. If that ice shelf breaks, there will be nothing stopping millions of tons of ice from falling into the sea.

For people living on the ocean, climate change might start affecting them sooner than they thought, if those volcanoes start erupting.

Source: The Guardian