On a Degenerate Evolution Equation Modelling Large Ice Sheets Dynamics

We present the mathematical analysis of a cold ice sheet flow model. The model combines the assumptions of slow, gravity driven non-newtonian viscous flow as appropriate to the solid state creep of ice. In order to prove the well-posedness of the model we introduce a weak formulation of multivalued...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: J.I. Diaz, E. Schiavi
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.4582
http://www.mat.ub.es/EMIS/proceedings/XIVCEDYA/comunicaciones/diaz3.ps
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Summary:We present the mathematical analysis of a cold ice sheet flow model. The model combines the assumptions of slow, gravity driven non-newtonian viscous flow as appropriate to the solid state creep of ice. In order to prove the well-posedness of the model we introduce a weak formulation of multivalued type. The existence and location of the free boundary generated by the support of the solution are also considered and a waiting time property for the response of the ice sheet is proved. 1 Introduction Modelling ice-sheet flow dynamics has been a challenging problem since the beginning of the century. Nevertheless the application of the shallow ice approximation is quite recent and respond to the empirical observation that typical ice sheets (Antarctica and Greenland, for example) have thicknesses much less than their horizontal extent and respond to this type of problems. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are the two mayor present day examples of ice sheets. During the last ice age (.