A large river has been discovered under the ice in western Antarctica, Nature Geoscience reports.

In recent decades, the ice cap of the South Pole has been threatened by global warming. Several factors are further accelerating its melting, and climatologists hope to calculate them and bring them under control.

Scientists at Imperial College London and their colleagues from other countries have studied the movements of ice masses in the west of the continent, relying on satellite imagery and airborne GPR data. In one area adjacent to the Weddell Sea, the ice was moving anomalously close, and a more detailed study revealed a large river beneath it. Its length reaches 460 kilometers, and every second 24 cubic meters of water passes through a slice of its bed. This river is comparable to the Onegoi or the Thames.

These same regions of glaciers lose more mass each year than their neighboring areas of ice masses with low velocity. Such differences, according to scientists, suggest that subglacial rivers in Antarctica accelerate the process of "sliding" of glaciers into the ocean, which increases the rate of their melting.

Scientists plan to continue research and look for other rivers to find out how exactly they affect the climate of Antarctica.