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  • Review Article
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Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 11 January 2022

This article has been updated

Abstract

Subglacial lakes are repositories of ancient climate conditions, provide habitats for life and modulate ice flow, basal hydrology, biogeochemical fluxes and geomorphic activity. In this Review, we construct the first global inventory of subglacial lakes (773 in total), which includes 675 from Antarctica (59 newly identified), 64 from Greenland, 2 beneath the Devon Ice Cap, 6 beneath Iceland’s ice caps and 26 from valley glaciers. This inventory is used to evaluate subglacial lake environments, dynamics and their wider impact on ice flow and sediment transport. The behaviour of these lakes is conditioned by their subglacial setting and the hydrological, dynamic and mass balance regime of the overlying ice mass. Regions where climate warming causes ice surface steepening are predicted to have fewer and smaller lakes, but increased activity with higher discharge drainages of shorter duration. Coupling to surface melt and rainfall inputs will modulate fill–drain cycles and seasonally enhance oxic processes. Higher discharges cause large, transient ice flow accelerations but might result in overall net slowdown owing to the development of efficient subglacial drainage. Subglacial lake research requires new drilling technologies and the integration of geophysics, satellite monitoring and numerical modelling to provide insight into the wider role of subglacial lakes in the changing Earth system.

Key points

  • We report a global inventory of subglacial lakes (773 in total): 675 from Antarctica (59 newly identified here), 64 from Greenland, 6 from Iceland, 2 beneath the Devon Ice Cap and 26 from valley glaciers.

  • 80% of subglacial lakes are stable, implying either closed systems or approximately balanced inflow and outflow; the remaining lakes are active and display one of five distinct activity patterns.

  • Active subglacial lakes exhibit a quasi-linear relationship between mean discharge and lake volume; lakes in Greenland and Iceland exhibit higher discharge rates for a given lake volume than do lakes in Antarctica.

  • Larger active subglacial lakes recharge at a faster rate than smaller lakes, suggesting an underlying control on lake refilling rate associated with lake size.

  • Lakes are less likely to occur where climate warming causes ice surface steepening, but drainage will be of higher magnitude, producing transient ice flow perturbations that are more likely to cause a net ice flow reduction.

  • Enhanced surface melt and rainfall inputs to the bed will modulate fill–drain cycles, increase the potential for catastrophic drainages and provide a supply of oxygen, sediment, microorganisms and nutrients.

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Fig. 1: Subglacial lake settings and hydrological links with ice sheets or glaciers.
Fig. 2: Methods for identifying subglacial lakes and investigating their dynamics.
Fig. 3: Global inventory of subglacial lakes.
Fig. 4: Subglacial lake activity patterns and the relationship with lake volume.
Fig. 5: Conceptual model of the influence of subglacial lake activity on ice flow.
Fig. 6: Microbial redox reactions across a range of lake settings.
Fig. 7: Impact of climate warming on the future distribution, geometry and activity of subglacial lakes.

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Acknowledgements

M.J.S. acknowledges funding from NERC grants NE/G00465X/3, NE/D008638/1 and NE/F016646/2. C.F.D. was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC 699 RGPIN-03761-2017) and the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC 950-231237). A.R. was supported by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation. This is UTIG contribution 3808. J.S.B. is funded by a UK Natural Environment Research Council PhD studentship (EAA6583/3152) awarded through the ENVISION Doctoral Training Partnership. M.McM. was supported by the European Space Agency’s Polar+ 4D Greenland study (4000132139/20/I-EF) and the UK NERC Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. R.J.S. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)-funded ONE Planet Doctoral Training Partnership (NE/S007512/1). J.A.M. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. Analysis of Antarctica’s Gamburtsev Province Project (AGAP) RES data was supported by a bursary from Antarctic Science Ltd awarded to K.W. The authors thank R. Bell and T. Jordan for their help with the data set. The radar-echo sounding data used to identify new subglacial lakes are freely available from CReSIS and NASA Operation IceBridge.

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Authors and Affiliations

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Contributions

S.J.L. led the project and assembled the authorship team. S.J.L. produced the global subglacial lake inventory with input from all authors. Y.L., R.J.S. and K.W. identified the additional new Antarctic subglacial lakes included in the global inventory and wrote the Supplementary Data. The section on lake discharge–recharge relationships came from discussions between S.J.L., F.S.L.N. and A.J.S. K.W. produced Fig. 1; S.J.L. produced Figs. 3, 4 and 5, with help from F.N. and A.J.S.; J.A.M. produced Fig. 6; A.R. and S.J.L. produced Fig. 7; and M.S., H.A.F. and A.R. contributed to Fig. 2. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript prior to submission.

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Correspondence to Stephen J. Livingstone.

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Nature Reviews Earth and Environment thanks F. Pattyn, T. Vick-Majors, K. Christianson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Glossary

Grounding line

The boundary where a grounded glacier becomes a floating ice shelf.

Basal hydrological potential

Total head determined by bed topography, weight of the overlying ice and basal drainage characteristics.

Cold-based ice

Ice below freezing point at the ice–bed interface, which is thus frozen to the underlying substrate.

Radio-echo sounding

(RES). A radar technique used to measure the internal structure, ice thickness, bed topography and water content of ice masses.

Jökulhlaup

Glacial outburst flood from a subglacial or proglacial lake.

Eskers

Slightly sinuous ridges of glaciofluvial sediments (such as gravels) that record the former drainage of meltwater under, in or on top of ice masses.

Redox reactions

Chemical reactions in which one molecule becomes reduced and another becomes oxidized.

Chemosynthesis

The fixation of single-carbon molecules into organic biomass using energy from the oxidation of inorganic electron donors.

Methanogenesis

A metabolic process that yields energy for microbial growth while releasing methane.

Necromass

Organic material consisting of or derived from dead organisms.

Nitrification

The oxidation of reduced nitrogen compounds to nitrite or nitrate.

Chemolithotrophic

The metabolic oxidation of inorganic compounds to yield energy and fix single-carbon compounds into organic biomass.

Equilibrium line altitude

(ELA). The elevation at which the accumulation and ablation of ice are in balance over a given time period (typically, 1 year).

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Livingstone, S.J., Li, Y., Rutishauser, A. et al. Subglacial lakes and their changing role in a warming climate. Nat Rev Earth Environ 3, 106–124 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00246-9

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