Ancient rocky structure found beneath Antarctica. And it's messing with the ice.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/ancient-rocky-structure-found-beneath-antarctica-and-its-messing-with-the-ice
An ancient rocky structure found at the heart of the Ross ice shelf helps determine where Antarctica's ice melts and where it stays firm and frozen.
The structure is an old tectonic boundary, probably formed during the birth of the Antarctic continent or shortly thereafter. According to new research published May 27 in the journal Nature Geoscience, this boundary protects the ice shelf's grounding line, the point at which it is thick enough to extend all the way to the sea floor. The geology created by the boundary keeps warm, melt-promoting ocean water away from that part of the shelf. But the ocean circulation driven by that same geology drives intense summer melt along the shelf's easterly edge.
"We could see that the geological boundary was making the seafloor on the East Antarctic side much deeper than the West, and that affects the way the ocean water circulates under the ice shelf," study leader Kirsty Tinto, a research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, said in a statement. [Antarctica: The Ice-Covered Bottom of the World (Photos)]
Also strange. Antarctica is full of volcanoes but experiences ZERO earthquakes each year.