An autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is the world's largest island and possibly the coldest one as well, as it sits right between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans - and, for the past decade, the world has been watching closely as an odd phenomenon occurs within its icy lands, in the mystery of Greenland's disappearing lakes.
The phrase "Greenland's disappearing lakes" sounds like something out of a crime novel or some sort of "Sherlock Holmes" outing, but the mystery has baffled scientists for years since the first time it happened, back in 2006, and two years later the phenomenon was first studied.
According to Live Science, the first of Greenland's disappearing lakes was the country's North Lake, a meltwater supraglacial lake that had 5.6 square kilometers (approximately 2.2 square miles) which randomly drained about 12 billion gallons of water in less than two hours, something that was later found to be because of giant water-driven cracks forming directly below its basin, draining the waters.
Up until now, this is where the mystery of Greenland's disappearing lakes remained, as scientists had no idea how these cracks were formed.
Now, Yahoo! News reports that a team of U.S. scientists (from the Joint Program in Oceanography managed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT/WHOI) has uncovered the secret behind Greenland's disappearing lakes, in a study that could ultimately help forecasting the levels of rising seas all over the globe: it seems like there are vertical shafts within the ice sheet (moulins) that funnel melt water under the ice and lift them up, causing the famous cracks that can empty lakes within days or even hours.
"In some ways, ice behaves like Silly Putty - if you push up on it slowly, it will stretch; if you do it with enough force, it will crack," said Laura Stevens, part of the team of scientists who made the discovery about Greenland's disappearing lakes, to Tech Times. "Ordinarily, pressure at the ice sheet surface is directed into the lake basin, compressing the ice together. But, essentially, if you push up on the ice sheet and create a dome instead of a bowl, you get tension that stretches the ice surface apart."
