The Potential for Basal Melting Under Summit, Greenland
Abstract The deep-drilling projects at the Summit ice divide will require thermal models to help interpret the paleoclimatic signals in their cores. An analytic, steady-state model predicts basal temperatures within 1 °C of the ice melting-point and basal ice no older than 100–400 kyear should melti...
| Published in: | Journal of Glaciology |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
1990
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022143000009400 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143000009400 |
| Summary: | Abstract The deep-drilling projects at the Summit ice divide will require thermal models to help interpret the paleoclimatic signals in their cores. An analytic, steady-state model predicts basal temperatures within 1 °C of the ice melting-point and basal ice no older than 100–400 kyear should melting occur. A two-dimensional, time-dependent temperature model includes the effects of realistic two-dimensional ice flow and the temperature and mass-balance patterns of the last two glacial cycles. The model relaxes some assumptions made in one-dimensional studies and produces lower basal temperatures. The basal temperatures are most sensitive to the value of the geothermal heat flux and the mass-balance pattern. If the flux is less than 56 mW m −2 , the bed has likely been frozen throughout the last glacial cycle. The decoupling of the energy and mass-conservation equations is a significant source of error which can be eliminated only by a fully coupled ice-flow/ heat-flow model. |
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