The largest study focused on the Antarctic sea floor has revealed how the ice layers vanished during rising temperatures 10,000 years ago. According to researchers, the findings of the study are helping them to predict how the Antarctica’s ice sheet might respond to future warming.

In their study, the researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany made use of sonar technology on board ships to study the sea bed of the Amundsen Sea embayment. The researchers scanned almost 10,000 square kilometres of the sea floor.

The images, which the researchers got, show channels as wide as a motorway and three giant troughs, as wide as the English Channel, and the researchers pointed out that much of the drainage of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) appears to be happened in this area.

The images helped the researches to conclude that the Amundsen Sea embayment is the major drainage point for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and according to the researchers, it is the most likely site for a major ice sheet collapse. The researchers also concluded that the sheet covering West Antarctica is highly unstable because it lies on rock below sea level, resulting in more icebergs breaking off.

According to Rob Larter, researcher from the BAS, the study tells more about how the ice sheet responded to warming at the end of the last ice age, and how processes at the ice sheet bed controlled its flow, and the findings of the study can help to predict how the ice sheets are likely to respond to future warming.