{"id":2310,"date":"2024-10-17T03:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2024-10-15T00:29:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T22:29:19","slug":"strange-modern-structures-discovered-on-the-arctic-seafloor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/2024\/10\/17\/strange-modern-structures-discovered-on-the-arctic-seafloor\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange ‘modern’ structures discovered on the Arctic seafloor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scientists have discovered a vast collection of underwater structures<\/a> in a remote area of the Arctic<\/a>, which offers a stunning new insight into the mysterious workings of this icy region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An international team of researchers found the vast range of formations, which are larger than football fields, along the edge of the Canadian<\/a> Beaufort Sea, and were amazed to learn that they\u2019re \u201cmodern\u201d phenomena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts had previously spotted a number of these gaping craters, which are covered in ice and sediment, and attributed them to the thawing of ancient permafrost under the waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, between 2010 and 2022, they identified a total of 65 newly formed craters, the largest of which is the size of a city block featuring six-storey buildings, as IFLScience<\/a><\/em> notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team, led by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), assumed that the permafrost spread over the area towards the end of the last ice age<\/a>, around 11,000 years ago, when sea levels rose, covering the ancient permafrost on the Arctic shelf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the latest research suggests there\u2019s more to the story than they originally thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Seafloor<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The team spotted newly-formed mounds and giant craters at the edge of the continental shelf in the Canadian Beaufort Sea<\/small>(Eve Lundsten \u00a9 2022 MBARI)<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For their most recent expedition, the scientists used underwater robots to collect samples from within the newly-formed seafloor craters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis of the ice revealed that it was created under present-day conditions \u2013 not in the distant past as originally suspected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They found that the ice is produced when deeper layers of ancient permafrost melt under the sea, creating brackish (slightly salty) groundwater that rises before sinking again and refreezing on its way back to the seafloor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It then remains frozen, at a temperature of -1.4C (29.5F), until the process starts again, IFLScience <\/em>reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put simply, the \u201cmodern\u201d ice formations are the result of an endless cycle of melting and refreezing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese findings upend our assumptions about underwater permafrost,\u201d the study\u2019s lead author Charlie Paull, of the MBARI, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe previously believed all underwater permafrost was leftover from the last ice age, but we\u2019ve learned that submarine permafrost ice is also actively forming and decomposing on the modern seafloor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cOur work shows that permafrost ice is both actively forming and decomposing near the seafloor over widespread areas, creating a dynamic underwater landscape with massive sinkholes and large mounds of ice covered in sediment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most significantly, the team\u2019s findings suggest that the depths of the Arctic Ocean are an ever-changing world, as opposed to an environment frozen in time for millennia, as once thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, Paull and his colleagues believe that their findings should prompt an important reevaluation of how humans interact with the region as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese dramatic and ongoing seafloor changes have huge implications for policymakers who are making decisions about underwater infrastructure in the Arctic,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have discovered a vast collection of underwater structures in a remote area of the Arctic, which offers a stunning new insight into the mysterious workings of this icy region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2313,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/2313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}