East Antarctica melting by leaps and bounds, needs to take concrete steps

London, More than 65 thousand superglacial lakes have been found in East Antarctica. These lakes are built on top of glaciers.

In a new study, researchers have claimed that this number of superglacial lakes is more than the data of earlier studies.

This means that due to climate change, glaciers are melting many times faster and lakes are being formed here.

The study is published in a journal called Scientific Report. For this, the researchers studied high-resolution images (images) taken from satellites.

These satellites cover an area of five million or 5 million square kilometers of Antarctica. During this time, the researchers found that in areas where the ice melting rate was very low for the last few years, lakes have started forming in those areas too.

The authors of this study also included researchers from Durham University in the US. The researchers said that for the first time they have done a detailed study of the ice sheets of East Antarctica.

Lakes are being formed in more parts

Chris Stokes, a researcher at Durham University and the lead author of the study, said, ‘We know that lakes have been forming in East Antarctica for some time now, but surprisingly the lakes are now forming most of the region. ‘

Construction of ponds in coastal lakes is worrying

According to the researchers, even though the ice sheet here is cold for most of the year, the temperature reaches -40 ° C in winter and above zero ° C in summer.

In such a situation the surface of glaciers starts melting. He said that the formation of lakes and ponds in the coastal areas here is a matter of concern for the world as it will affect the whole world.

Researchers said that melting snow meant that climate change was now beginning to have more impact in Antarctica than previous estimates.

Need to take concrete steps

When researchers looked at satellite images of ice sheets in the East Antarctic in January 2017, it was found that the lakes of melting water were within a few kilometers radius and many lakes were floating in the ocean.

Earlier researchers had estimated that there would be only a few thousand lakes in this area. But in the recent study, the whole picture of this area changed. Stokes said, ‘Ice is constantly melting in East Antarctica due to climate change. We need to take concrete steps to avoid this in time.