variations and free surface evolution in the Shallow Ice Approximation (SIA)

• Main Author: Cecilia Håård
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.593.8168; http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:631306/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Ice sheets and glaciers constitute an enormous water storage, currently correspond-ing to a potential sea level rise of almost 70 meters if all ice was to melt completely. The ice sheets are dynamic components of the global climate system and numerical modeling is a useful tool that can help us understand and predict how the ice sheets develop. The most accurate model available for ice sheets is given by the Stokes equations, but to solve them for a real ice sheet on a relevant time scale would be way too computationally costly. Instead approximations of the Stokes equations are used such as the Shallow Ice Approximation (SIA). The SIA is valid for areas where the aspect ratio , the ice thickness divided by the horizontal extent of the ice, is small. In this project equations for temperature and surface evolution were implemented in a Matlab version of SIA. The model already had algorithms implemented for computation of stresses, velocities and pressures for an ice sheet with fixed geometry and temperature. Implementation of temperature and free surface equations also