National Science Foundation (NSF) - funded researchers have found that a Greenland lake disappeared after millions of gallons of water rushed down through the cracks in the ice sheet. In a single, day, an entire lake that covered 2.2 square miles was gone. The 11.6 billion gallons reached a peak sustained flow faster than the average flow rate over Niagara Falls, the scientists said.

The papers will be printed in Science magazine on May 9 and will be co-authored by glaciologists Sarah Das, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Ian Joughin, University of Washington, as well as Mark Behn, Dan Lizarralde and Maya Bhatia of WHOI; Ian Howat, Twila Moon, and Ben Smith of UW; and Matt King of Newcastle University.

"We found clear evidence that supraglacial lakes — the pools of meltwater that form on the surface in summer — can actually drive a crack through the ice sheet," Das said in a statement. "If there is a crack or defect in the surface that is large enough, and a sufficient reservoir of water to keep that crack filled, it can create a conduit all the way down to the bed of the ice sheet," she said.

The event took place in July 2006, raising worries about the effects of global warming on the Earth's ice sheets. The research was funded by NSF, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Woods Hole's Clark Arctic Research Initiative, and its Oceans and Climate Change Institute, NSF announced in a statement.