An Ancient Volcano Buried in Antarctic Ice Has Created a 6,000-Year Record of Ice Movement

October 29, 2018

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An ancient and dormant volcano buried in the ice has created a 6,000-year record of the motion of an Antarctic ice sheet.

The massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet encompasses more than 6 million cubic miles, and could cause a major global sea-level rise if it were to collapse.

But it's what's happening underneath the sheet that has some researchers excited. Mt. Resnik, a mile-high, inactive volcano sitting beneath the ice sheet, has created an almost 6,000-year record of the glacier's motion, according to Nicholas Holschuh, a postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences at University of Washington News. He is first author of the paper on the discovery.

See more in this roughly one-minute segment of Science Now, a weekly NSF newscast covering some of the latest in NSF-funded innovation and advances.