Whillans Ice Stream () is a glaciological feature of the

West Antarctic Ice Sheet The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the Antarctic ice sheet, continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is cla ...

, formerly known as Ice Stream B, renamed in 2001 in honor of

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

glaciologist Glaciology (; ) is the scientific study of glaciers, or, more generally, ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, clim ...

Ian Whillans.

Research

Whillans Ice Stream is one of about a half-dozen large, fast-moving rivers of ice pouring from the

into the

Ross Ice Shelf The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (, an area of roughly and about across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than long, and between high ...

. The

ice stream An ice stream is a region of fast-moving ice within an ice sheet. It is a type of glacier, a body of ice that moves under its own weight. They can move upwards of a year, and can be up to in width, and hundreds of kilometers in length. They t ...

is the subject of different glaciological studies, one of which is looking at

subglacial lake A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where liquid water can exist above the lower melting point of ic ...

s that researchers believe may be speeding the movement of the ice as they periodically fill and drain. Other researchers funded by the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

, reported in the June 5, 2008 issue of the journal ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'' that, from seismological and GPS data, they discovered the Whillans Ice Stream releases two bursts of

seismic wave A seismic wave is a mechanical wave of acoustic energy that travels through the Earth or another planetary body. It can result from an earthquake (or generally, a quake), volcanic eruption, magma movement, a large landslide and a large ma ...

s every day, each one equivalent to a magnitude 7

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

. The data show that the river of ice moves about a half-meter within approximately 30 minutes, remains still for 12 hours, then moves another half-meter in phase with gravitational tides. Each time it moves, it emits seismic waves that are recorded at

seismographs A seismometer is an instrument that responds to ground displacement and shaking such as caused by quakes, volcanic eruptions, and explosions. They are usually combined with a timing device and a recording device to form a seismograph. The out ...

around

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

and even as far away as

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, a distance of more than 6,400 kilometers. In 2024, it was shown that the large slow seismic events on the ice stream cause the adjoining

to abruptly shift by up to 6 cm in the course of a few minutes as trapped seismic waves within the shelf propagate northward. In 2007, an active subglacial water system consisting of several interconnected subglacial lakes was discovered under Whillans Ice Stream using repeat-track data from the

ICESat ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite) was a NASA satellite mission for measuring ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics. It operated as part of NASA's Earth Obser ...

satellite (Fricker and others, 2007). One of these active lakes, subglacial

Lake Whillans Lake Whillans is a subglacial lake in Antarctica. The lake is located under the Whillans Ice Stream at the southeastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in the west of the continent. The lake surface is beneath the surface of the ice and the lake co ...

, is the subject of a major drilling program funded by the National Science Foundation (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access (WISSARD)) which successfully reached the lake on January 28, 2013. In January 2015, drilling near the grounding line revealed a colony of fish, crustaceans, and jellyfish inhabiting the dark, frigid waters below the

ice shelf An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace the more dense surrounding ocean water. T ...

. Images taken with a remote camera showed fish and

amphipod Amphipoda () is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods () range in size from and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 10,700 amphipod species cur ...

Notes and references

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External links

Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access (WISSARD)
(last entry 2015) (archived 2020) Ice streams of Marie Byrd Land

Research

See also

Notes and references

External links