Discovery of relict subglacial lakes and their geometry and mechanism of drainage

Recent proxy measurements reveal that subglacial lakes beneath modern ice sheets periodically store and release large volumes of water, providing an important but poorly understood influence on contemporary ice dynamics and mass balance. This is because direct observations of how lake drainage initi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stephen J. Livingstone, Daniel J. Utting, Alastair Ruffell, Chris D. Clark, Steven Pawley, Nigel Atkinson, Andrew Fowler
Format: Other Non-Article Part of Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Discovery_of_relict_subglacial_lakes_and_their_geometry_and_mechanism_of_drainage/19813897
Description
Summary:Recent proxy measurements reveal that subglacial lakes beneath modern ice sheets periodically store and release large volumes of water, providing an important but poorly understood influence on contemporary ice dynamics and mass balance. This is because direct observations of how lake drainage initiates and proceeds are lacking. Here we present physical evidence of the mechanism and geometry of lake drainage from the discovery of relict subglacial lakes formed during the last glaciation in Canada. These palaeo-subglacial lakes comprised shallow (