Scientists Make Shocking Discovery in Antarctic Waters

Antarctica is the world's least explored continent, known for its harsh and remote environment. Now scientists have made a shocking discovery lurking beneath Antarctic waters. Researchers have discovered 332 hidden trenches, known as submarine canyon networks, deep in the ocean floor - five times more than previously thought.

Some of these underwater trenches reach staggering depths - up to 4,000m, which is about the height of Mont Blanc, writes the Daily Mail. Scientists have discovered about 10,000 underwater canyons around the world. And with only 27% of the seafloor mapped in detail, there are likely many more to be discovered. However, researchers say those beneath the ice of Antarctica are the largest and most impressive on the planet.

David Amblas of the University of Barcelona says: "The most impressive of these are in East Antarctica, which is characterised by complex, branching canyon systems."

The underwater canyons around Antarctica are so large because they are formed by a phenomenon known as turbidity currents, the Daily Mail points out. These are underwater avalanches of sediment and water that move at up to 45 miles per hour down the steep slopes of the continental shelf, carving deep channels as they go.

Dr Amblas said: "Antarctic submarine canyons, like those in the Arctic, resemble those in other parts of the world. But they are generally larger and deeper due to the long-term impact of polar ice and the huge volumes of sediment transported by glaciers onto the continental shelf."

These vast canyons play a vital role in a number of important ocean processes, the Daily Mail notes. They transport nutrient-rich sediment from the coast into the wider ocean, connect shallow and deep waters and create habitats rich in biodiversity. However, despite their importance, these unique environments remain deeply studied, especially in remote, hard-to-reach places like Antarctica.

In their paper published in the journal Marine Geology, Dr. Amblas and his co-author used the most comprehensive and detailed map of Antarctica to find previously undetected canyons. By analyzing the map using a semi-automated canyon-detection method, the researchers found many more canyons beneath the ice than previously expected. Interestingly, these new maps showed that there was a large variation between canyons in different parts of the continent.

Study co-author Dr Riccardo Arosio, a marine geologist from University College Cork, told MailOnline: 'It was very exciting to find a striking difference between the East and West Antarctic Canyons that had not been observed before.

Dr Arosio says that canyons in the east form "long canyon systems and are often U-shaped", while canyons in the west of the continent are "shorter, steeper and V-shaped".

This is probably because the canyons in the west were cut by water released by relatively recent melting of the ice sheet, while the canyons in the east are the result of a much longer process of glacial activity.

The researchers say the discovery could have much broader implications for how we predict the impacts of climate change.

Antarctic canyons facilitate the exchange of water between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, writes the Daily Mail. This allows cold, dense water from near the ice sheet to sink into the deep ocean and cause global ocean circulation currents that help maintain climate stability. At the same time, these canyons also bring warmer water from the open sea upwards to meet the floating ice shelves, causing ice melt that weakens Antarctica's inland glaciers. By affecting how quickly water from the ice sheet enters the ocean, these channels have a direct impact on global sea level rise.

However, ocean models used by organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not take into account the influence of these hidden canyons.

Dr Arosio says: "The lack of these local mechanisms limits the ability of models to predict changes in ocean dynamics and climate."

In the future, by collecting more high-resolution data in unmapped areas, the researchers hope to discover even more submarine canyons beneath the ice. Understanding these canyons and how they affect the circulation of water around the poles could be key to accurately predicting the effects of climate change.