On a Degenerate Evolution Equation Modelling Large Ice Sheets Dynamics

• Main Authors: J.I. Diaz, E. Schiavi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Greenland; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet
• 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

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 (.