Thermal behaviour of glacier and laboratory ice
Abstract Water is present in glaciers in the form of veins at the three-grain junctions. This water remains unfrozen even many degrees below the normal freezing point, mainly because it contains much of the soluble impurity content of a glacier, but also because of the microscopic curvature of the i...
| Published in: | Journal of Glaciology |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
1991
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022143000005839 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143000005839 |
| Summary: | Abstract Water is present in glaciers in the form of veins at the three-grain junctions. This water remains unfrozen even many degrees below the normal freezing point, mainly because it contains much of the soluble impurity content of a glacier, but also because of the microscopic curvature of the ice–water interfaces. As the temperature is lowered and the veins shrink, the concentration of impurities in them increases, and the curvature effect also increases. The predicted relation between vein size and temperature has now been verified by laboratory experiments. Because of the latent heat of the vein water, the ice behaves macroscopically as a continuum with an anomalous specific heat capacity that depends strongly on temperature. From this point of view, a polythermal glacier is a single medium with continuously varying properties, rather than consisting of distinct cold and temperate phases with sharp boundaries between them. The paper sets up differential equations for heat diffusion in such a continuum. To explain the local uniformity of the vein system seen under the microscope, it is found necessary to include the effect of diffusion of solutes along the veins. Solutions are presented for a model in which two semi-infinite slabs, initially having different temperatures, impurity concentrations and vein sizes, are instantaneously brought into contact. In this way, transition thicknesses between cold and temperate ice are estimated, and also the velocities of various kinds of waves that are generated from the original discontinuity at the interface. |
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