The new data provides a more detailed picture of the effect underwater canyons have on climate change. Photo: Riccardo Arosio, David Amblas
The key to our future climate might be lying on the bottom of the seafloor. In a study published in the journal Marine Geology, scientists recently mapped vast Antarctic canyon networks, and used the results to better understand climate change.
In the study, researchers from the Faculty of Earth Sciences at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and the marine geosciences research group at University College Cork, Ireland used data from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean to create a detailed map of 332 canyon networks – nearly five times the number of canyons identified in previous studies. In doing so, they found that the vast underwater depressions may have a greater influence on ice-sheets than previously thought.
Underwater canyons have been increasingly recognized as playing a crucial role in climate change. They are conduits for water exchange in the world’s oceans, funneling heat, sediment and nutrients along with it. There are canyons all over the seafloor, but as research team member David Amblàs told The Guardian, the ones in Antarctica “tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf.”
“That’s why we must continue to gather high-resolution bathymetric data in unmapped areas that will surely reveal new canyons, collect observational data … and keep improving our climate models to better represent these processes and increase the reliability of projections on climate change impacts.”