Scientists drilling a hole through a glacier accidentally triggered an enigmatic type of flood. While it is a scary incident, it also gave the researchers a chance to study glacial floods. Scientists are still perplexed by how this type of flood occurs regularly at certain glaciers, and why they occur:
On a field campaign to Iceland’s Vatnajökull ice cap in 2015, Eric Gaidos at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and his colleagues drilled a borehole that hit a body of meltwater encased within the glacier. Over the next five days, that pool drained through the borehole into the lake below Vatnajökull, causing a pressure increase beneath the glacier. When the pressure built up enough, a flood of icy water was released into the nearby Skaftá River.
Such an event could happen without human assistance, the authors say, if natural cracks in the glacier allowed water to drain into the underlying lake.
Image via Nature
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Here we have an example of someone doing The Backstroke.
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