0021-8928/01/$-see front matter MODELLING ICE FLOW IN VARIOUS GLACIER ZONES-j-

• Main Authors: A. V. Wilchinsky, V. A. Chugunov
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ice Sheet; Ice Shelf
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.573.9106; http://www.cpom.org/research/aw-jamm.pdf

A simplified model of plane isothermal steady ice flow in the land-based part, the shelf and the ice-sheet-ice-shelf transition zone of a glacier which interacts with the sea is constructed using Glen’s flow law and perturbation methods. Boundary conditions on the joining line are obtained for the land-based part of the glacier. The dynamics of the ice-divide domain of the glacier is analysed for the case of axially symmetric, steady, isothermal ice flow. 0 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Laboratory investigations [l] have shown that the motion of ice can be described using a model of the flow of an incompressible fluid with an exponential rheological aw and a creep coefficient close to three (Glen’s law). In the case of glaciers, the Reynolds number is of the order of 10-l ’ and the Stokes approximation, which describes inertialess flow, is therefore used. It has been shown [2] that, in the case of many glaciers, the effect of temperature can be taken into account by the choice of its characteristic value in the layer close to the base. On account of this, we will henceforth confine ourselves to considering two-dimensional isothermal flow. We shall also assume that there is no ablation and slippage of ice on the bed [3] (which is assumed to be solid). The viscosity of water is neglected compared with the viscosity of ice (in the floating ice region) and the high-frequency components of the function for the bed profile are also neglected (the characteristic slopes of the bed and the upper surface of the land-based glacier are assumed to be equal).