scholarly journals Derivation of ice thickness and bedrock topography in data-gap regions over Antarctica

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 191-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland C. Warner ◽  
W. F. Budd

AbstractAn approach to deriving the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet and inferring the bedrock elevation to fill in gaps in the compilations of ice-thickness observations is presented. It combines assumptions about the general state of balance of the ice sheet and of the dynamics of ice flow, with information about ice accumulation and the topography of the ice-sheet surface elevation to infer the ice thickness and bedrock. A simplified version of the scheme already shows the potential of this approach, as is demonstrated by an application to the Lambert Glacier basin, East Antarctica.

1982 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 42-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.F. Budd ◽  
I.N. Smith

A large-scale dynamic numerical model of the Antarctic ice sheet has been developed to study its present state of ice flow and mass balance as well as its response to long-term changes of climate or sea-level.The flow of ice over a two-dimensional grid is determined from the ice thickness, the basal shear stress, the bedrock depth, and ice flow parameters derived from velocities of existing ice sheets. The change in ice thickness with time is governed by the continuity equation involving the ice flux divergence and the ice accumulation or ablation. At the ice sheet seaward boundary, a floating criterion and floating ice thinning rate apply. Bedrock depression with a time-delayed response dependent on the history of the ice load is also included.A 61 × 61 point grid with 100 km spacing has been used to represent the ice-sheet surface, bedrock, and accumulation rate. The model has been used to simul a te the growth of the present ice sheet and i ts reaction to changes of sea-level, bedrock depression, accumulation rate, ice flow parameters, and the iceshelf thinning rate.Preliminary results suggest that the present ice sheet is not in equilibrium but rather is still adjusting to changes of these parameters.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ritz ◽  
Christophe Dumas ◽  
Marion Leduc-Leballeur ◽  
Giovanni Macelloni ◽  
Ghislain Picard ◽  
...  

<p><span>Ice temperature within the ice is a crucial characteristic to understand the Antarctic ice sheet evolution because temperature is coupled to ice flow. Since temperature is only measured at few locations in deep boreholes, we only rely on numerical modelling to assess ice sheet-wide temperature. However, the design of such models leads to a number of challenges. One important difficulty is that the temperature field strongly depends on the geothermal flux which is still poorly known (see White paper by Burton-Johnson and others,2020 </span><span></span><span>). Another point is that up to now there is no fully suitable model, especially for inverse approaches: i</span><span>)</span><span> analytical solutions are only valid in slowly flowing regions; ii</span><span>)</span><span> models solving only the heat equation by prescribing geometry and ice flow do not take into account the past changes in ice thickness and ice flow and </span><span>do not couple </span><span>ice flow and temperature. Conversely, 3D thermomechanical models that simulate the evolution of the ice sheet take into account all the relevant processes but they are too computationally expensive to be used in inverse approaches. Moreover, they do not provide a perfect fit between observed and simulated geometry </span><span>(ice thickness, surface elevation) </span><span>for the present-day ice sheets </span><span>and this affects the simulated temperature field</span><span>.</span></p><p><span>GRISLI (Quiquet et al. 2018), belongs to this family of thermomechanically coupled ice sheet models An emulator, based on deep neural network (DNN), has been developed in order to speed-up the simulation of present-day ice temperature. We use GRISLI outputs that come from 4 simulations, each covers 900000 years (8 glacial-interglacial cycles) to get rid of the initial configuration influence. The simulations differ by the geothermal flux map used as boundary condition. Finally a database is built where each ice column for each simulation is a sample used to train the DNN. For each sample, the input layer (precursor) is a vector of the present-day characteristics: ice thickness, surface temperature, geothermal flux, accumulation rate, surface velocity and surface slope. The predicted output (output layer) is the vertical profile of temperature. In the training, the weights of the network are optimized by comparison with the GRISLI temperature. </span></p><p><span>The first results are very encouraging with a RMSE of ~ 0.6 °C (calculated from the difference between the emulated temperatures and GRISLI temperatures over all the samples and all the depths). Once trained, the computational time of GRISLI-DNN for generating temperature field of whole Antarctica (16000 columns) is about 20 s.</span></p><p><span>The first application (in the framework of the ESA project 4D-Antarctica, see Leduc-Leballeur<span> presentation in this session</span>) will be to use this emulator associated with SMOS satellite observations to infer the 3D temperature field and improve our knowledge of geothermal flux. Indeed, it has been shown that SMOS data, coupled with glaciological and electromagnetic models, give an indication of temperature in the upper 1000 m of the ice sheet. Our emulator could also be used for initialization of computationally expensive ice sheet models.</span></p>


2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 439-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weili Wang ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Jay Zwally ◽  
Vin Morgan ◽  
Tas D. Van Ommen

AbstractAn ice-flow model has been developed and applied to Law Dome, East Antarctica, at the location of the Dome Summit South deep borehole. The results are used to reconstruct an ice-sheet history of accumulation rate, ice thickness and the rate of change in ice thickness. The focus of this study is on the effect of the variation in anisotropic flow properties on the ice-sheet surface elevation change. The enhancement factor, defined as the ratio of the strain rate for anisotropic ice to the strain rate for isotropic ice, is used in the ice-flow relations to account for the anisotropic properties of the ice with fabric development. The model is run with the various ice rheologies which represent anisotropic or isotropic ice-flow properties. The results show that the model incorporating anisotropic flow properties of the ice is more sensitive to the climate-change history.


1982 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 42-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.F. Budd ◽  
I.N. Smith

A large-scale dynamic numerical model of the Antarctic ice sheet has been developed to study its present state of ice flow and mass balance as well as its response to long-term changes of climate or sea-level.The flow of ice over a two-dimensional grid is determined from the ice thickness, the basal shear stress, the bedrock depth, and ice flow parameters derived from velocities of existing ice sheets. The change in ice thickness with time is governed by the continuity equation involving the ice flux divergence and the ice accumulation or ablation. At the ice sheet seaward boundary, a floating criterion and floating ice thinning rate apply. Bedrock depression with a time-delayed response dependent on the history of the ice load is also included.A 61 × 61 point grid with 100 km spacing has been used to represent the ice-sheet surface, bedrock, and accumulation rate. The model has been used to simul a te the growth of the present ice sheet and i ts reaction to changes of sea-level, bedrock depression, accumulation rate, ice flow parameters, and the iceshelf thinning rate.Preliminary results suggest that the present ice sheet is not in equilibrium but rather is still adjusting to changes of these parameters.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 911-933 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. F. Glasser ◽  
S. J. A. Jennings ◽  
M. J. Hambrey ◽  
B. Hubbard

Abstract. Continent-wide mapping of longitudinal ice-surface structures on the Antarctic Ice Sheet reveals that they originate in the interior of the ice sheet and are arranged in arborescent networks fed by multiple tributaries. Longitudinal ice-surface structures can be traced continuously down-ice for distances of up to 1200 km. They are co-located with fast-flowing glaciers and ice streams that are dominated by basal sliding rates above tens of m yr-1 and are strongly guided by subglacial topography. Longitudinal ice-surface structures dominate regions of converging flow, where ice flow is subject to non-coaxial strain and simple shear. Associating these structures with the AIS' surface velocity field reveals (i) ice residence times of ~ 2500 to 18 500 years, and (ii) undeformed flow-line sets for all major flow units analysed except the Kamb Ice Stream and the Institute and Möller Ice Stream areas. Although it is unclear how long it takes for these features to form and decay, we infer that the major ice-flow and ice-velocity configuration of the ice sheet may have remained largely unchanged for several thousand years, and possibly even since the end of the last glacial cycle. This conclusion has implications for our understanding of the long-term landscape evolution of Antarctica, including large-scale patterns of glacial erosion and deposition.


1986 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 124-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.F. McIntyre

Mapping the topography of the Antarctic ice sheet has confirmed that there is, typically, a decrease in the wavelength and increase in the amplitude of surface undulations with distance from ice divides. This pattern is distorted by converging ice flow in coastal regions and by other variations in subglacial relief, ice velocity, and viscosity. The near-symmetry of undulations indicates the extent of three-dimensional flow over bedrock peaks. Spectral analyses indicate the greater response of the ice sheet to bedrock features with longer wavelengths. This is affected, and in some cases dominated, by the inhomogeneous and non-isothermal nature of the ice sheet.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2481-2499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Le clec'h ◽  
Aurélien Quiquet ◽  
Sylvie Charbit ◽  
Christophe Dumas ◽  
Masa Kageyama ◽  
...  

Abstract. Providing reliable projections of the ice sheet contribution to future sea-level rise has become one of the main challenges of the ice sheet modelling community. To increase confidence in future projections, a good knowledge of the present-day state of ice flow dynamics, which is critically dependent on basal conditions, is strongly needed. The main difficulty is tied to the scarcity of observations at the ice–bed interface at the scale of the whole ice sheet, resulting in poorly constrained parameterisations in ice sheet models. To circumvent this drawback, inverse modelling approaches can be developed to infer initial conditions for ice sheet models that best reproduce available data. Most often such approaches allow for a good representation of the mean present-day state of the ice sheet but are accompanied with unphysical trends. Here, we present an initialisation method for the Greenland ice sheet using the thermo-mechanical hybrid GRISLI (GRenoble Ice Shelf and Land Ice) ice sheet model. Our approach is based on the adjustment of the basal drag coefficient that relates the sliding velocities at the ice–bed interface to basal shear stress in unfrozen bed areas. This method relies on an iterative process in which the basal drag is periodically adjusted in such a way that the simulated ice thickness matches the observed one. The quality of the method is assessed by computing the root mean square errors in ice thickness changes. Because the method is based on an adjustment of the sliding velocities only, the results are discussed in terms of varying ice flow enhancement factors that control the deformation rates. We show that this factor has a strong impact on the minimisation of ice thickness errors and has to be chosen as a function of the internal thermal state of the ice sheet (e.g. a low enhancement factor for a warm ice sheet). While the method performance slightly increases with the duration of the minimisation procedure, an ice thickness root mean square error (RMSE) of 50.3 m is obtained in only 1320 model years. This highlights a rapid convergence and demonstrates that the method can be used for computationally expensive ice sheet models.


Nature ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 460 (7256) ◽  
pp. 766-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Steig ◽  
David P. Schneider ◽  
Scott D. Rutherford ◽  
Michael E. Mann ◽  
Josefino C. Comiso ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (63) ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Farinotti ◽  
Hugh Corr ◽  
G.Hilmar Gudmundsson

AbstractAn interpolated bedrock topography is presented for Flask Glacier, one of the tributaries of the remnant part of the Larsen B ice shelf, Antarctic Peninsula. The ice thickness distribution is derived by combining direct but sparse measurements from airborne radio-echo soundings with indirect estimates obtained from ice-flow modelling. The ice-flow model is applied to a series of transverse profiles, and a first estimate of the bedrock is iteratively adjusted until agreement between modelled and measured surface velocities is achieved. The adjusted bedrock is then used to reinterpret the radio-echo soundings, and the recovered information used to further improve the estimate of the bedrock itself. The ice flux along the glacier center line provides an additional and independent constraint on the ice thickness. The resulting bedrock topography reveals a glacier bed situated mainly below sea level with sections having retrograde slope. The total ice volume of 120 ±15 km3 for the considered area of 215 km2 corresponds to an average ice thickness of 560 ± 70 m.


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