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But with global heating and climate change wreaking havoc on the ice caps of Antarctica, researchers are looking to a new map of the south polar region to better map global warming changes and their effects on subglacial life.

While Fretwell cautioned he is not an expert in lacustrine habitats, meaning large bodies of water where life may be possible, he said Bedmap3 will help inform new studies of subglacial lakes.

"Our knowledge of subglacial lacustrine environments has hinged largely on satellite measurements and radar mapping," Bell said, noting that the under-ice Lake Vostok – first suggested by Soviet sounding studies in the 1950s and 1960s – was at last confirmed in 1993 using laser altimetry from the European Remote Sensing-1 satellite.

Bell is a research professor at Columbia University who has led 10 expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland in part to study deep subglacial lakes.

The actual sources and locations of subglacial methane production actually remain somewhat of a mystery, hidden beneath ice masses of all sizes.