Which lake is the world’s largest subglacial lake?

Lake Vostok is the world’s largest known subglacial lake, buried beneath Antarctica’s East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The lake lies beneath roughly 4 kilometres of ice and is about 250 kilometres long. Scientists estimate that it contains around 5,400 cubic kilometres of water, making it comparable in volume to a large surface lake despite being completely hidden.

Lake Vostok was identified through ice-penetrating radar and satellite observations. Its water is kept liquid partly by geothermal heat from below and pressure from the immense ice above. Researchers drilled through the ice in 2012, but contamination concerns complicated interpretation of samples.

The lake is named after Vostok Station, the Russian research station located above it. It is not the same as Lake Whillans, another Antarctic subglacial lake that has been directly sampled in scientific studies.