Massive Liquid Water Reservoir Discovered Under Greenland Ice Sheets

University of Utah researchers have discovered a massive reservoir of liquid water under Greenland ice sheets, an area that remains frozen practically all year long, according to a press statement.

The reservoir known as a "perennial firn aquifer" covers an area of 27,000 square miles. The discovery was made during a 2011 drilling expedition where University of Utah researchers studied 14 percent of southeast Greenland, which receives 32 percent of the entire ice sheet's snowfall. Three locations were drilled out of which two yielded liquid water. During one drill, the water was discovered at a depth of 33 feet and at the second location they found water at 82 feet.

"This discovery was a surprise," Rick Forster, lead author and professor of geography at the University of Utah, said in a statement. "Instead of the water being stored in the air space between subsurface rock particles, the water is stored in the air space between the ice particles, like the juice in a snow cone."

Researchers ruled out the possibility of the water reservoir being the consequence of melted ice seeping in through the cracks since it was spring time. This discovery will help researchers understand how sea levels rise due to ice melting. According to a BBC News report, Greenland ice sheet lost 34 billion tons of ice per year between 1992 and 2001. The new discovery could mean that a good amount of this melted ice is being stored under the ice sheets.

"Of the current sea level rise, the Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest contributor - and it is melting at record levels," Forster said. "So understanding the aquifer's capacity to store water from year to year is important because it fills a major gap in the overall equation of meltwater runoff and sea levels."

Rising sea levels are the consequences of three major factors, melting ice sheets begin one of them. National Geographic reported earlier that the global sea levels have risen drastically over the last few decades. In fact, in the 1990s alone, Earth's oceans have risen by .14 inches, which is twice faster that the level rise rates of the 1980s.

"Most models assume water runs off or refreezes," Forster told Discovery News. "Is this water buffering sea-level rise? Or is it already connected and passing through and there's just a delay? Right now we don't know. It may be something in between. We don't know the answer to this right now. It's massive, it's a new system we haven't seen before -- we need to understand it more completely if we are to predict sea level rise."