Accurate modelling of glacier flow ...

• Main Author: Waddington, Edwin Donald
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0052458; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0052458

Recent interest in climatic change and ice .sheet variations points out the need for accurate and numerically stable models of time-dependent ice masses. Little attention has been paid to this topic by the glaciological community, and there is good reason to believe that much of the published literature on numerical modelling of the flow of glaciers and ice sheets is quantitatively incorrect. In particular, the importance of the nonlinear instability has not been widely recognized. The purposes of this thesis are to develop and to verify a new numerical model for glacier flow, compare the model to another widely accepted model, and to demonstrate the model in several glaciologically interesting applications. As in earlier work, the computer model solves the continuity equation together with a flow law for ice. Thickness profiles along flow lines are obtained as a function of time for a temperate ice mass with arbitrary bed topography and mass balance. A set of necessary tests to be satisfied by any numerical ...