Over a decade ago, scientists were mystified when lakes sitting atop Greenland's ice sheet suddenly drained out billions of gallons of water in just hours. Now it appears the mystery is solved. Geoscientists have published a new study in the journal Nature on June 3 explaining the alarming phenomenon, reported Live Science.

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The team of U.S. researchers are saying that this new study could help them predict sea-level rise. The scientists used GPS technology in discovering the mystery.

The ice sheets in Greenland have vertical shafts or "moulins." These moulins can reportedly act as a funnel for melt water under areas of the glacier, lifting them up.

This process in turn results to cracks under the supraglacial lakes and they are emptied within days, said scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography.

Sea-level rise comes into the picture as the draining lakes speeds up the water rising when large volumes of water from the lakes are dumped into the ocean. This also lubricates flow of ice offshore.

In the journal Nature research, scientists say that lakes with lower and warmer altitudes on the ice sheet with moulins are more vulnerable.

"The trigger is less likely to occur at lakes at higher elevations on the ice sheet - even though water volumes in those lakes can be large," the research said.

"Our discovery will help us predict more accurately how supraglacial lakes will affect ice sheet flow and sea level rise as the region warms in the future," according to Laura Stevens, the study's lead author, in a Woods Hole press release.

Last year, two lakes on the Greenland ice sheet, which had billions of gallons of water, mysteriously disappeared, according to Ohio State and Cornell University scientists.

The ice sheet measures over more than 600,000 square miles. It is therefore known to contribute significantly to sea-level when in melts, according to Reuters.

The study is critical as the drainage in the Greenland ice can increase rising of the sea significantly, and it has melted dramatically during the summer. NASA recorded that in the summer of 2012, fully 97 percent has melted.

There is also a recent study which estimated that from 2009 to 2012, Greenland has been losing 378 gigatons of its ice annually. A gigaton is measured to be a billion metric tons.

Just three hundred and sixty gigatons is enough to raise the world's seas by one millimeter, according to The Washington Post.

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