NASA Finds City Buried Under Sea Using Advanced Tool, Shares What Was Observed

• A radar image captured by NASA scientists in April 2024 revealed Camp Century, an abandoned Cold War-era military base buried 30 metres beneath Greenland's ice
• Using advanced UAVSAR technology, researchers mapped the base's intricate layout, showcasing its hidden structures in unprecedented detail
• This discovery not only sheds light on the depth of the camp but also enhances global efforts to measure ice thickness and predict future sea-level rise

A remarkable discovery unfolded in April 2024 as NASA scientists, flying over northern Greenland, captured a radar image that exposed an abandoned Cold War-era military base, Camp Century, buried deep beneath the ice.

The image was taken using NASA's Gulfstream III jet, equipped with the cutting-edge UAVSAR instrument.

Camp century revealed

Camp Century, a military base constructed in 1959 beneath the surface layer of the Greenland ice sheet, had been abandoned since 1967.

Over decades, layers of snow and ice accumulated above the base, leaving its solid structures buried approximately 30 metres (100 feet) below the surface. Researchers had not anticipated discovering the facility during their mission to map the ice bed.

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"We were looking for the bed of the ice, and out pops Camp Century. We didn’t know what it was at first," Alex Gardner from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) shared.

Advanced technology highlights structures

Unlike past two-dimensional airborne surveys, the April mission utilised the UAVSAR radar system, renowned for producing maps with greater dimensionality.

NASA scientist Chad Greene revealed that the new data provided unprecedented visibility of the abandoned "city," allowing researchers to observe the layout of structures and tunnels in finer detail than ever before.

“In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” Dr Greene stated.

Estimating future risks

The radar maps have offered fresh insights into the depth and layout of Camp Century. These calculations will help determine when melting ice might re-expose the base and its hazardous remnants, including biological, chemical, and radioactive waste, buried decades ago.

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Existing data and conventional radar maps corroborated the depth findings.

Implications for global ice mapping

The innovative UAVSAR system tested during this mission may revolutionise how ice sheets are surveyed in Greenland, Antarctica, and beyond.

Researchers aim to use this technology to measure ice thickness and project sea-level rise with improved accuracy.

“Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” Dr Greene highlighted.

This breakthrough depicts the importance of continued advancements in aerial mapping technologies to enhance our understanding of the Earth's changing cryosphere.

Scientists remain hopeful that these tools will contribute to more accurate projections of global sea-level rise in the face of climate change.

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Source: Legit.ng